I’m embarrassed to admit to you that for most of my life I have desperately desired two things (besides love and peace of course): recognition and acknowledgment. For a good portion of my life I have gone after these two things as bass ackwards as you could go.  I got recognition all right, but not the kind that I really wanted in the depths of my heart.

Several years ago when I first started to entertain the idea of returning to college because, even though I had an Associates Degree and had 175 hours of Life Coach training, the big gaps in my knowledge, education and awareness of what was going on in and around the world was starting to wear thin with me.  There’s just so much hem hawing around that you can do when you surround yourself with very bright people (then can spot that Navaho thread right off!).  Anyway, during this time of looking into returning I began collecting my various diplomas and certifications.  I actually received a nice piece of recognition and acknowledgment from the Dean of Students (formerly the Guidance Counselor for the Girls) at the boarding school I went to when she sent me my high school grades with a note that said something to the affect that my grades didn’t reflect the fact that I had placed in the top 10% in the nation in IQ. Now I don’t know how the heck she had that information, but I didn’t want to dig too deep in case I could prove her wrong!  I sat on those laurels for a few years and then finally enrolled at Texas State University in 2009.

Imagine my surprise when I got a letter from the Golden Key International Honor Society recently in recognition of my outstanding academic achievement and my placement in the top 15% of my class. In my mind, this kind of award should go to students like my friend Melissa M. who has consistently earned A’s holding at least 17 hours a semester, but hey, I’ll take it even though I’m only taking two classes a semester.  The Honors Program at Texas State University is one of the best-kept secrets going on this campus.  The classes that are offered to the Honors students are fantastic, current, interesting and fun and taught by the cream of the crop professors. Classes are limited to 17 students max so there is great opportunity for one-on-one time with the teachers and interacting with your classmates.  For any student who is working their tail end off and getting good grades, I highly recommend you check into the Honors’ Program—you’ll be really glad that you did.

I’m grateful to my husband for carrying the weight of being the breadwinner so that I could return to school and heal this huge gaping wound from my unfinished past. Plus, just being able to connect the dots between what I knew, what I thought I knew and what I definitely didn’t know is so great. Let’s face it, it’s hard enough going through a huge hormonal fluctuation that make you do bizarre things like putting an opened container of cottage cheese in the pantry instead of the fridge without adding to that a huge lack of education.

Our Universal Human Rights’ Professor told us recently about an article by Michael Kinsley in the Atlantic http://tinyurl.com/256dhv4 which reported that “our generation” (hers and mine since we’re both Baby Boomers) have been self-absorbed, self-indulgent and all too often just plain selfish and need to apologize to the generations that came after us for the mess we have made.  Well, yes, I can see this perspective and my hope is that there are still many Baby Boomers who have enough fire in their belly to enable them to pull some pretty incredible rabbits out of their hats at this 11th hour.  While attending school to complete my degree I’ve been diving into blogging to help and encourage people, I’ve been interviewing all kinds of people who are doing great things out there to help out the world on Blog Talk Radio and I’m in the process of helping a team of incredible people put the finishing touches on a talk show that will be filmed at the end of this month to then go into some savvy producers’ hands to take it into the next dimension so I know that I want to help heal and ignite and I’m trying a variety of ways to make that happen right now before I even earn a degree.

Today I want recognition and acknowledgment for and about what is possible. I want recognition and acknowledgment for what you see and hear that I am trying to do to help and your two cents on how we can make that happen together.  It is more important to me today to pay attention to legacy building and how our efforts can positively impact the generations who come after us than just what is in it for plain ole me!

So, here it is again that lesson about fighting for what we think we want so long and so hard and then at some point in our quest, letting go and letting the divine and accidentally morphing into something that we never considered for ourselves so that that “thing” that when we stumble upon that “thing” that we thought we wanted all this time we realize that some facet of it was in ourselves all the time and all we needed was to shine the light upon it.

May you recognize your top 15% specialness today and activate it for tomorrow.