Setting My Sights Sky High & Ending Up In Israel

When I was 13 years old, I attended a Career Planning Day at my middle school. After so many years, it stands out in my memory as a life-changing event because on that day, I set my sights Sky High.

The students were broken up into discussion groups and we were tasked with identifying our 3 top choices of a future career for ourselves, and to share them and discuss them with the group. There were several adults from various careers who volunteered to facilitate that day, and the facilitator for our group gave us some time to talk, and then joined us to guide our discussion. When I was called upon to share my ideas, I told them I only had ONE goal, and that was to get on an airplane out of there. I remember the facilitator telling me that if my only aspiration was to be on a plane, I should at least have a particular destination in mind. I thought about it, and answered, “somewhere far away.” He determined for me that either I set my sights too low, or that I was refusing to cooperate with the assignment and moved on to the next student, shaking his head at me as if we had some private joke. I, of course, was serious.

The more I thought about it, and I did think about it, the more I realized that my answer was the only honest answer I could give because I wanted to prepare my eyes to see over the rim of my city and see what other lives could be lived. I wanted to see some other options. Detroit is my mother city, but it is kind to no one. The lessons learned were hard ones, valuable though they most assuredly were. Words like “non-conformist,” and “free-thinker,” empowered me privately as I held onto my urge to see the world. I never wanted to see myself as being defined as a person, open to scrutiny and misunderstanding. Instead, I saw myself as a designer of a life worth living, by my own standards.

At 16 years old, I “fished my wish,” in a very BIG WAY; I got to travel. My family was poor, comprised of a single mom, five kids (and a dog), all active in our community. I think I went to almost as many meetings as Congress. We were on welfare and food stamps, dealing with food and heat issues, safety issues, and violence and drugs were moving into our neighborhoods. How I could continue to believe that I was going to travel is ironic, since even my daily bus ride downtown was tedious, often dangerous, and always challenging. However, I spent my 16^th birthday in Washington, D.C., as a Detroit Representative at a National Convention for the Coalition for Peaceful Integration. I watched snow falling on the Capitol Building at midnight, when my birthday started, thinking this was going to be a good year for me. And it was. Not only did I travel, but all of my trips were paid for by someone else.

In May, I was selected to be a Detroit Representative to an Ambassador for Peace to Israel program, which was made up of 5 students each from 6 U.S. cities: Detroit, New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, and San Francisco. We spent several days in Manhattan, including an orientation at the United Nations. It was a 5 week program, and I was in Israel in May, during its 30^th anniversary as a country. (T-shirts we were given: After 2,000 years, it’s great to be 30). I saw Tel Aviv, Yaffa, Jerusalem, Bethleham, Ein Geddi, the Dead Sea, the Negev Desert, the Jordan River, a kibbutz in the Golan Heights, and Eilat (at the Red Sea). I went from having a fierce City pride, to developing a new National pride. I began my study of Israel, and have been watching and learning about it ever since. (That is a whole different conversation). During the plane rides there and back, I also had fun in layovers in Rome, Naples, Athens and Montreal.

That summer, I was invited on two different trips, one to Chicago by train ride, earning my way by baby-sitting with a friend for a couple on vacation, and the other to Toronto, CANADA, with some school friends, to see the Caribbean Festival. My eyes were filled with the sights of more of the world than I ever logically should have seen, but I never stopped believing. I have traveled a great deal since, and the excitement of every new place, all the new faces, the color of the sky, the smell of the soil, the flowers and the homes, the languages and the food… and I remembered each time that I had set my sights on traveling at 13, and never have I lost that wonder and awe that life provided it for me. I have seen many incredible things in my life, and I still have big ideas. More to come…

About the Author:http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855