Laura Secord Chocolates

My Nana was a basketball star in her day. She played for Moulton College in Canada. She was a star at a lot of things, she is still my hero. Sure I had Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, and Cheryl Swoopes on my wall along with all of the other WNBA players - but the only star that really mattered to me was Nana.

She used to challenge me to make baskets around the arch. It started out as making it at all five spots in a row (the baseline, the corner jumpers and the free-throw line). I was playing for a box of Laura Secord chocolates. I guess that was how she got good at playing when she was young, she challenged herself with the reward of chocolate. I guess I came about my chocolate addiction honestly :).

It was a funny thing this motivation she provided me... it seemed that everytime I overcame the challenge she posed for me she would up the ante. It was five baskets until I could make all five, then it was two times around, then three. Needless to say I never got a box of Laura Secord chocolates. I did learn a unique lesson though... never quit challenging yourself. Set achievable goals, accomplish them, and then set more. Like in a race, try to beat the runner directly in front of you.

Today I listened to Obama's speech to the students of America and it felt like a throw back to the lesson my Nana was instilling in me. Push yourself, don't quit challenging yourself, success is hard and failure is common. Fate doesn't plop success into your lap, successful people WORK for their success. I feel proud to be in a country where our President holds us accountable for our own success and our own achievements. It makes me think of a quote from my second favorite president of all time:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Teddy Roosevelt
"Citizenship in a Republic,"Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910