Listen to Your Heart

It was the summer after I graduated from high school and I was working at a summer camp in New Hampshire for boys from the Boston ghettos. All came with real life issues, some in handcuffs, some in wheelchairs, and many without parents. I had my own real life issues - my mother would die of cancer the next year, and I had friends that were fighting in Vietnam. The day I got the letter, I had just worked through a mild seizure with a wheelchair bound epileptic in my cabin. My stress level was high, and then I read the letter, a friend had died in Vietnam. I walked to the camp office and immediately punched a hole through the wall. The camp director took me for a walk, listened, and then said, “Billy, life is going to happen, learn to let go of your anger by listening to your heart.”