Thought 20NOV2009

JUST THE WAY YOU ARE
My friend Mark Tucker produces and delivers multi-media slide presentations to audience across the country. One night, following one of shows on the East Coast, a woman came up to him and said, "You know, you really should be using my son's music in your show." So Mark started to give her the usual rap. First, her son should make a demo tape. It didn't have to be professional, he explained. In fact, her son could just go into his bedroom and play some simple chords on his guitar - just enough to give Mark an idea of the type of music he played. After he had explained the whole process, the woman gave him a funny look and said, "Well, my son is Billy Joel."

As soon as he had recovered from the shock, Mark quickly assured her that her son would not need to send a demo tape! He then listened as this woman urged him to consider using one particular song her son had written. She felt it contained a positive message about self-worth that would fit Mark's work beautifully. And she went on to describe how the seeds of that song had been planted in early childhood. As a young boy, she explained, Billy Joel often wanted to be someone else, someone different from who he was. It seems he was teased a lot because he was shorter than the rest of the kids. It was common for him to come home from school or play and complain that he wasn't good enough. And he truly believed that if he could be just a little taller, then he'd be okay.

His mother, of course, never believed for a minute that her son was anything less than perfect. So every time he expressed something negative about himself, she said to him, "Don't worry - it doesn't matter. You don't have to be like anyone else because you're already perfect. We're all unique, we're all different. And you, too, have something wonderful to share with the world. I love you just the way you are." Remember that old expression about words coming back to haunt you? In this case the words of a mother who unconditionally loved her son came back many years later in the form of a song. You see, Billy Joel grew up, he learned who he was and he found his dream of creating music for the world. And millions of people got to hear with their hearts, as his mother did, the words of his Grammy Award-winning song : Don't go changin'... to try and please me ... I love you just the way you are
Jennifer Read Hawtrhorne - extracted from 'Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul', Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jennifer Read Hawthorne & Marci Shimoff, Health Communications, Inc., 1996
Quien hace la ley hace la trampa / Every law has its loophole - Spanish Proverb