Smile

The end of the school year always offers a measure of anticipation that brings back fond memories of more youthful days. As the promise of summer beckons with each passing day, you can almost taste the chocolate mint or cookies’n cream ice cream that will cool your palate after a day spent frolicking in the sun. You can almost taste the salt in the air that comes with a stroll along a moonlit beach. You can almost smell the sunscreen-slathered crowds at the community swimming pools. Although my youthful days as measured in numbers are well behind me, the end of the school year always reinvigorates the youth in me as measured by the promise of things to come that I see in a young person’s eyes.

My family and I recently spent a day enjoying the thrill of New York with a niece who had just completed a fantastic two-week advertising program in America’s hotbed of creativity and excitement. The joy of her two weeks of discovery and the anticipation of what her life might hold in the years ahead emanated from her. Her hopeful excitement was contagious. I can still clearly remember what it felt like when I was her age — to be consumed with the promise of what lies ahead. To know that the days of endless reading, studying, cramming and testing are coming to an end, to be replaced with the excitement of your first professional endeavor. I was reminded of that thrill. I am every time I’m around young dreamers.

Few things are as powerful as the hope of a young person’s dreams, or as intoxicating as their absolute belief in their ability to fulfill those dreams. Perhaps that’s why few things give me greater joy than being privy to those aspirations. When we surround ourselves with dreamers, some of the wonder is bound to rub off.