After I got tired of switching between Usher and Peter Cetera, I decided to change the station to NPR, and I drove the last 40 minutes listening to the news about Egypt, the Superbowl, and this little thing called life.
I heard Liz Murray on the BBC, and her story removed me from the blizzard in Sardine Canyon and took me to the streets of the Bronx. Her memoir, "Breaking Night," is something I need to own, and her story was exactly the thing I needed to hear on my scary drive. Nothing seems scary after hearing about her life, though.
How can someone take a set of hellish circumstances and turn them into powerful lessons of love and forgiveness? How am I so self-consumed that my life has yet to make anything half as beautiful as what Liz has made?
Coming from two drug-addicted parents, Liz spent most of her childhood watching her mom cash the welfare check only to buy heroin and cocaine. She watched her parents shoot up in the kitchen, and even though she went to bed hungry, she knew that they loved her. By the age of 15, Liz was homeless on the streets of New York City, and only after watching her mother die of AIDS was she able to take a hold of her life - her right now - and create a future different than the prescribed destiny of hopelessness.
She went to high school.
She went to Harvard (with a $12,000/year scholarship from the NYTimes, no less).
And now, she's creating a world where people can discover that homeless does not equal hopeless.
What a crazy thing this life is. I'm so grateful for people like Liz Murray, who help me understand the big picture. Someday I want to be a teacher at the Broome Street Academy, and I want to let everyone know the power that responsibility, respect, and love have on every single life.
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