At around 2:30 today we left the apartment for our travels to San Francisco. As I was on the plane I was able to catch up on some lost reading throughout the year. I had the opportunity to read about a principal who had essentially built her own school in on of New York's most difficult neighborhoods. Every page spoke to me, but what I enjoyed the most were the small stories of success shared throughout the book, the idea that any child can learn, can reach the standards as long as they are lifted higher and higher until that student is soaring. 

I have always been a firm believer that if you try hard enough, you can get anywhere you want to go. I realize there are exceptions to this rule, but I myself was always led by this idea that no matter how many times I may fail, if I try harder and harder and never quit, eventually that dream will happen. And I still, to this day, live by this notion. Ms. Lopez is an extraordinary principal. She has achieved what she has achieved not only due to her intelligence, but due to her philosophy that every child matters, that ZIP code does not always have to dicate where you are headed and that opening doors for others is possible when you view every impossibility as a possibility. 

Just as I was reading the ending pages of this particular book and the reasoning behind Ms. Lopez and her catch-phrase for her students "Bridges to Brilliance," I began to see the California Coastline in the distance as the clouds looked like they were touching the tops of the houses that we were passing over. Every child deserves the opportunity to reach those clouds suspended within that bright blue sky. And they can as long as there are role-models who are spreading the word that those clouds can be reachable. But it takes work. And a realization that there is a world out there greater than ourselves. As we became closer and closer to the ground, that familiar excitement teeming within me, it struck me that when so much of our lives is spent in a single space in a single city, we sometimes forget that there are new dreams and new people and sometimes even more beautiful destination that lie outside of our line of vision. I think this is always something so very important to remember as we find our feet touching down next to new neighborhoods and people and places.