Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter Four
“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you,
whose presence calls forth your best.”
—Epictetus
I
n many ways, the only reason you are reading these words is because of a life-changing
meeting I had nearly twenty years ago. This probably comes as no big surprise, but my ad-
olescence wasn't pretty. In fact, it was a rough couple of years before I became the only
slightly less awkward man I am today. At home, I was the infamous middle child, stuck
between two brothers who somehow had been given the manual on life that I failed to re-
ceive. The only respite I felt was when I was walking home from school. On that brief walk,
I could be whoever I wanted to be—and that was often anyone but Leon Logothetis. But
then I would get home, and whatever little self-worth I had would slip away between my
much more boisterous brothers.
Thankfully, I have a good mother who noticed that things were not going so well for her
middle son. She sent me to see Dr. Susan Mann, an after-school teacher of sorts. It was Dr.
Mann who lifted me out of my slumber. She showed me two things: One, that kindness was
everything. And two, that I was worth something.
“You are special, Leon,” she would say as she sat across from me in her bright, window-
lined office. “Your talent is unlimited.”
Sometimes all it takes is one person to believe in you, in order to believe in yourself.
The world is often much better at telling us when we are wrong or what we need to fix or
how we've screwed up, but really all it takes is one person to look inside us, and tell us
that we can be whatever we want to be, for us to believe. As I walked through the wealth-
drenched town of Saint-Tropez, hungry and homeless, wondering again why I—once that
gangly, pimple-faced kid—had thought I could pull off an adventure like this, I couldn't help
but remember Dr. Mann's words, so many years after they were first uttered.
