Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Under his tutelage, I got up the courage to ask to play striker again. After the fifth game
in which I failed to score, Mr. Martin took me aside and he said, “Do you believe in your-
self? Be honest.”
I looked down at my cleats, unsure how to respond because I was ashamed of the an-
swer. Finally, I looked up, trying not to lock eyes with him, as I admitted quietly, “Not
really.”
He bent down so that I couldn't avoid his stare, and he said, “That's why you can't
score.”
And then his voice softened to a whisper as he added, “I believe in you.”
He walked off, and I could hear his words echoing in my soul. It was all I needed really,
just that one person to unlock that part of me that feared I would never amount to much.
I went out that afternoon, and I scored. That year, I went on to be the top striker for my
team. Three years later, I was the top scorer for my college. And years later, I believed that
I could make it around the world on nothing but kindness. Because one man's kind words
on a rainy afternoon in a sock-filled locker room had changed everything. Like Dr. Mann
before him, his words might have been one of the first gifts that led to all the others. Be-
cause it took someone else to believe in
me
for me to believe in someone else.
The sun was beginning to lower against the wintery sky of Washington, and still all
those years later, I could hear Mr. Martin's words:
I believe in you
. The night before, I had
stayed with a college student in his dorm room, actually on the floor of his dorm room,
where we spent a better part of the night talking about the trip that had led me there. He
was so enthralled by what I had done that I asked him if he ever hoped to travel.
“I'd like to,” Ryan started, but then he explained. “But I'm on scholarship, and I don't
know. I don't know how I'll ever get that chance.”
The people of the world had given me a chance. They had unlocked the part of me that
didn't believe it could ever happen, and I realized as I drove through the deepening cold of
an Oregon winter afternoon, that it was my turn to give that chance to someone else.
That morning, as I left Ryan, I told him, “If you believe in something hard enough, I
find you can do almost anything.” I felt Mr. Martin's words ricocheting across time, forever
altering the course of one young man's life by giving him permission to dream, and now, I
hoped, offering the same to another.
That night as I drove into the town of Eugene, I could feel Los Angeles drawing closer. I
managed to meet a married couple who offered to put me up for the night. Bill and Melissa
had been married for sixty-three years after a chance meeting in the late 1940s.
