I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Les Brown video with you, and I was putting some careful thought yesterday into which one to share with you first ( I KNOW OCD), and was very glad you weren’t too tired to watch it. Hearing your laughter warmed my heart and I’m ecstatic that day by day I’m noticing more positive energy emanating from you! Having that outside perspective from someone who loves you very much I just thought you should know there seems to be a little more joy and twinkle in your eye lately, and I could die a happy man tomorrow from that. But I think I’ll stick around a bit longer to make sure that twinkle shines even brighter….
Humble Beginnings
Leslie Calvin Brown and his twin brother, Wesley, were born on February 17, 1945, on the floor of an abandoned building in Liberty City, a low-income section of Miami, Florida. Their birth mother, married at the time to a soldier stationed overseas, had become pregnant by another man and went to Miami secretly to give birth to her sons. Three weeks later, she gave them away. At six weeks of age, both boys were adopted by Mamie Brown, a 38-year-old unmarried cafeteria cook and domestic. The importance of her entrance into his life, Brown concludes, was immeasurable. “Everything I am and everything I have I owe to my mother,” he told Rachel L. Jones of the Detroit Free Press. “Her strength and character are my greatest inspiration, always have been and always will be.”
The confidence that Brown’s adoptive mother had in him, the belief that he was capable of greatness, was not shared by his teachers. As a child he found excitement in typical boyhood misadventures. He liked to have fun, and he liked attention. Overactive and mischievous, Brown was a poor student because he was unable to concentrate, especially in reading. His restlessness and inattentiveness, coupled with his teachers’ insufficient insight into his true capabilities, resulted in his being labeled “educably mentally retarded” in the fifth grade. It was a label he found hard to remove, in large part because he did not try. “They said I was slow so I held to that pace,” he recounted in his book.
But…
(I Would, BUT…)
(Oh I can do it, BUT…)
( “Woulda”, “Coulda”, “Shoulda”, “One Day I’m Gonna”)
Les called, But… the “Dream Killer”, here is the Excerpt from the clip that you Enjoyed!
“But is an Argument for our limitations, and when we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them”
Follow the Arrows to the Link Below (kinda small sorry) for The Power to Change Video & MP3 as well as many other archived videos and mp3s from Les Brown if you’re interested. You can download the .mp3 version right on your desktop for any of the speeches that might interest you or just watch the videos.
