Once upon a time I when I was very young I grew up in a world in which my mother spoke softly to me about her farming days of childhood, and my father read to me stories by Hans Christian Anderson.
In the afternoons, my siblings and I played outside and built forts and imaginary worlds where we took turns being pauper and prince, servant and princess.
And in the evenings, we sat together, the six of us at the dinner table while we shared about our days, our dreams and our thoughts about art, culture, politics or sometimes about nothing at all.
Those days when I was very young were not polluted by the distractions of countless electronic devices, the need for constant instant gratification or gossip about famous people who were infamous about nothing at all.
These were the days of magic when I felt I belonged and when I learned and believed my worth, not because I stole it, bought it or swindled it, but because I lived my worth each day with people who I looked up to.
In the quiet peace of yesteryear, everything was possible simply because . . . we all believed that it was.
