Did I make a difference?

Today I had a conversation with a young man. He's a young man with a troubled history. One of those histories that you hope your unborn kids don't inherit.

The start of this story is the first time a needle touched his skin. The first buzz of the craziness of a line of speed. The slow, smooth wash of a cone laden with ganja. And from each of these firsts came a life slipping, sliding, scrambling, and slithering into a life of blurred senses and frightening criminal actions. A life, once full of promise, that today clambers for the tiniest of recognition beyond bars.

Life in these surrounds seems at first to be desperate and hopeless. Each day turns into the next with only the sun's slow arc across the sky to set them apart. Hope is what is read in a magazine and life is what is enjoyed by others.

But this young man is different. In his eyes is a steely resolve to start anew, to be something more - or just to be normal. Sometimes even the most mundane goals are those from seeds of the greatest tree of inspiration.

His are goals to be merely normal. To contribute in ways that the most ordinary of the free take for granted. And in this struggle to be normal and average is a struggle to learn the skills that many boring, pedestrian, mundane successful people take for granted.

Forget the grand, forget the eloquent. Just let's make it to tomorrow in a way that leaves this young man proud to be just ordinary.

In my heart of hearts I hope I'm there to cheer him on and to make that tiny bit of difference. In so doing I hope that his life becomes the most beautiful, ordinary life there is.