So I’m sitting here watching TV and turned it on the new Oprah channel. There’s a show called Master Class, which is people with experience talking about stuff. So here I am, 44 year old white writer, teacher, etc and I discover Jay-Z talking on this show. And damn the man is so intelligent and so . . . insightful. He’s talking about integrity and believing in yourself and this constant striving for more in life. Yep, he is taking me to class and I am learning from what he says. I’ve heard his music before and even have a song on my MP3 player, but beyond that I don’t know anything about him. But now, with this program, he is saying things that make sense to me. He is saying things that I can think about and mull over beyond the hour he will be on my television.

I guess the whole point of this rambling is to say that we can learn from anyone at anytime. All we have to do is open our ears and our mind and our heart. We need to listen to one another, no matter what the message is and learn to understand one another. Everyday we are given an opportunity and we need to take it and make something of it. If I learned nothing from last year, I learned that time is short. We need to take hold of life with both hands and get what we can out of it. No matter what.

–GC