You Know You’ve Made It
By Mort Laitner
When do you know that you have made it?
Sadly, some people never know.
Why, because they haven’t made it. If they had they’d know.
For those who have, they know. Their brains exploded in glee. They reached the mountain top; experienced the quintessential, ah ha, wow moment. They inhaled the sweet smell of success and tasted victory. That apex of momentary bliss, that rush of rushes, that supreme feeling of satisfaction when your brain yells out,
“You made it!”
Remember your graduation when you threw your mortar board as high as you could or the day you heard over the phone that you passed the licensure examination. You cried and jumped with joy. How about when you ripped open that envelope and saw those magic words, “Congratulations you have passed.” You let your finger tips run across each word, as if touching and rubbing the ink made them more real.
Remember in the sixties, when you lazily strolled into the Royal Castle shook your bouncing Afro from shoulder to shoulder and heard a five-year old exclaim to his mother, “Look mommy there’s a hippie!” Well maybe not you, but I knew I made it.
Well, the editors of Healthy Stories proudly announce, we made it!
After three years of hard work and many small successes (three editions) our wow moment arrived on our computer screens. The author of the email was David Lawrence, Jr.
Yes, Mr. Lawrence had read Healthy Stories. He read our book in one day and he loved it. He called it, “quite special.” He even tendered a blurb for our next edition, “So much good writing. Healthy Stories is meaningful and healthy help, and full of good storytelling.”
You don’t remember who David Lawrence Jr. is? He was the publisher of the Miami Herald. Before that he was the publisher and executive director of the Detroit Free Press and before that the editor of the Charlotte Observer. While he was in charge, these newspapers won five Pulitzer prizes. David has received twelve honorary doctorates.
Today he’s the president of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation.
Talk about street credibility for our publication.
And to that five-year-old kid (now forty-five), thanks buddy – you taught me to know when I had made it.
