“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” – Anatole France
Anatole France was a celebrated French author and poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921. While he had an extensive catalog of work, most people only know him (if they know him at all) by these two simple lines, usually because they read it on a graduation card or a motivational poster, like the one that hung on my bedroom wall. Continue reading “You Are What You Believe”
My Uncle Sal used to play a trick on his friends, using my 5-year old cousin as his accomplice. During a conversation, he would casually mention that they had recently had their son’s IQ tested, and that he had scored well above a genius level. To quiet their disbelief, he would then ask my cousin several difficult math and history questions, and to their amazement, 
Suddenly, what had been an awful year now had the potential to turn catastrophic. I had just hung up with our insurance provider, and was trying to figure out a way to tell my very pregnant wife that we would be paying for our daughter’s birth out of our meager savings, and if anything went wrong, it could bankrupt us. “Hi honey! Um, I was thinking that maybe this time we would try having the baby at home, with no medicine or doctors? Maybe the boys can help!” 