Haitian– American singer Wyclef Jean warms our hearts this New Year’s with this recent answer to an interviewer’s question: blah --> How did your life change when you moved to Brooklyn [from Haiti]?
It was like day and night. The small village I was raised in didn’t have electricity -- no light, no nothing. My parents came and got me when I was 9, and I can still remember what it was like to see those headlights.
Landing at JFK for the first time, can you imagine?
I looked out the window and couldn’t see nothing but lights. They were so glaring that I said to my brother, “Man, we’ve arrived in the city of diamonds. This place is so rich, it’s nothing but diamonds on the floor!” It can be easy to forget, Readers. Lots of things are there to distract us. The stress of the job hunt. The bustle of the holidays. The demands of your current job.
But for many immigrants, and for all of us fortunate enough to be born here, this is the land with diamonds on the floor.
Don’t let yourself forget that we are the best educated, healthiest, best fed and best traveled generation in history. And the opportunities that we have when it comes to work really are unprecedented: to chose our own job, to pursue our own career, to pursue our own happiness.
That’s really tremendously different than the way our ancestors lived, and even far removed from the experience of most of our fellow human beings on the planet today.
So, even if you’re going through a tough time this year end, and especially if you’re not, please take a moment to celebrate the extraordinary good fortune we all have to be here in the here and now.
Because celebrating our successes -- spiking the ball in the end zone, high–fiving after the home run, raising our arms in victory at the finish line -- is something we don’t do enough in business and our careers here in America. And celebrating is important because it reminds us of what has enabled us to get to where we are today.
John D. Rockefeller was the world’s richest man in his day and undoubtedly had much to celebrate. But what was actually his “most joyful holiday of the year?”
You can find out in this clipping from the September 27, 1922 New York Times (click on the image to see a larger version):
Yes, John D. Rockefeller’s “most joyful holiday of the year” was the day he got his first job as a lowly clerk in a produce warehouse, and he celebrated that day for the rest of his life.
So, in this new year remember "LUCK, is when OPPORTUNITY meets PREPARATION!!!" Continue to make the most of every opportunity for it is your time to be living proof of your exhausted efforts of preparation.
May God bless you and keep you. . .
Love LADYBUG. . .
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