Miracles take time

Miracles take time
There was a knock at my door. A young man affectionately known as the ‘The Emu from CMU’ (Carnegie-Mellon University) stood at my door. I invited him in and told him I wanted to see him about the young people’s group. He told me a little bit of his drinking history, which started when he was fifteen, but got really bad his freshman year.
“My senior project in high school was a study on poverty in America,” he said. “I won an award for it. I was convinced I was going to change the world.”
“You’re twenty-one. I think there’s still time.”
He shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. I was the smartest kid in my little corner of Michigan. People told me I would do great things. I thought I was going to change the world before I got out of CMU.”
“So what happened?”
“CMU wasn’t my little corner of Michigan. There were lots of really smart people doing lots of really smart things. The world wasn’t changing despite all that intelligence.”
“The world has changed a lot just in my lifetime. I’d argue many, if not most, of those changes have been for the better.”
“In your lifetime? Of course the world has changed in your lifetime! How old are you, seventy?”
“I’m fifty-two,” I said.
“The thought of people waiting fifty-two years for the world to change makes me want to get high,” he said with a heavy sigh.

Today I will remember the old adage: miracles don’t happen overnight.

AArdvarks (c) 2103 by Ken Montrose