Starfish & Coffee

After some internet sleuthing, I found my high school guidance counselor's mailing address.  He'd be in his 70's now.  I wrote him a thank-you card and sent it off.  I hope he is comfortably retired in Florida.  He made a huge difference in my life, and I just finally let him know that.  


He was all about developing peer support at our school.  So he trained a handful of high school students in Rogerian listening techniques, and gave us some experience facilitating small groups (with an adult team member).  He saw some ability that I didn't know I had.  It's not hard to see how my career path as a therapist began here.


He started these weekend retreats, focused on learning study skills, as well as some aspects of emotional literacy, and he'd make this announcement to everybody on Friday night after dinner if anybody wanted to go home:  He promised to personally take anyone home in 24 hours if they still wanted to go home.  The catch was this:  "This Is It."  That was how you had to spend the next 24 hours.  Not, "When I get home, THAT will be it," or "When I graduate THAT will be it," or "When I get my driver's license THAT will be it," or the innumerable iterations of "This isn't it."  THIS. IS. IT.  Right now.  Here.  And he never had to take anybody home.


He loved to tell the story of the starfish -- about the little girl on the shore throwing starfish back into the ocean.  A guy comes up and asks her what she's doing, and she says she's saving the starfish from baking in the sun.  The guy says there's hundreds of starfish on the shore, thousands maybe, and she'll never be able to make a difference.  She throws one back in the ocean and says, "I made a difference to that one."


He had me draw a starfish, and he made these little buttons with the starfish on them that said "I make a difference."  Super sappy.  I know.  I think my Buddhist education began here.