A Note From Santa

I just received this note from Santa via Napoleon Hill Foundation and wanted to share it with you.

North Pole – December 24, 2010

First stop on my sleigh ride tonight will be a small town outside of Nashville, Tennessee. No doubt about it. I won’t be visiting a house. No, I’ll be visiting an old trailer parked in the still damp and muddy yard. The house that used to be there is just an empty shell of its former self. And there is no one in that house anymore; just some memories floating in the damp air. The trailer in the yard doesn’t have a chimney so that will make my task difficult. I’m planning on sneaking in and out of a small side window. I won’t be dropping off a Play Station on this first visit tonight. No XBOX either, nor any Harry Potter memorabilia. Not this year, not in Nashville. I’m bringing just a hammer.

Here’s what the elves have told me.

Three-year-old Cebastian huddled with his two dogs as a steady and ominous rain pounded his modest home on that fateful day of that fateful week. His parents went about their normal business at home and told concerned relatives who called that “it’s raining a lot but nothing too serious.” Minutes later they were gone, never to see their home in a livable state again. Over thirteen inches of rain, and devastating flooding, decimated Nashville and Middle Tennessee on the first two days in May of this year. The Cumberland River reached nearly twelve feet above flood stage before the waters began to finally recede. The destruction was “Katrina-like” in many Tennessee towns. Homes and lives were changed forever.

Said Cebastian a few days later when he returned with his parents to see their flooded out home with virtually no contents left inside, “My house is broken. But we’re going to fix it.”

So I’m bringing a hammer to Cebastian tonight, so he can fix his house. He doesn’t need to know right now that the county will not permit any rebuilding on their muddy lot. They’ve come to realize, a bit too late, that it’s a dangerous flood zone. The house will eventually be demolished. So while Cebastian’s parents wait patiently, seven months after the storm, for FEMA and the insurance companies to determine their housing fate, Cebastian will take matters into his own hands – with his hammer. “My house is broken. But we’re going to fix it,” he says repeatedly until today.

He lost all of his toys in the flood but he doesn’t need another toy now. And he doesn’t need pity. He just needs a hammer so he can fix his broken house. And together with his parents and two dogs, they will fix it, for while their house is broken, their spirit is not.

Young Cebastian has not yet studied Napoleon Hill’s works yet somehow he knows that “Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.” There is opportunity in every calamity. Cebastian’s shell of a house in Tennessee may look empty to some eyes, but just as some see the glass as half empty, Cebastian and his family see it as half full. Said his mother just hours after the flooding forced their evacuation, “We’re all alive and healthy so we’re fine.”

While we may not understand why things happen the way they do when they happen, with time and patience and understanding and above all – with faith – we come to learn that everything happens for a reason, in its proper place and time. “Time is relentless in preserving the seed of an equivalent benefit that hides within a defeat,” says Dr. Hill. “The best time to begin looking for that seed in a new defeat is now.”

So with hammer in hand, Cebastian will forge onward. This I have no doubt.

If he could speak to me tonight when I fly away from his trailer, I’m sure Cebastian would hug his dogs and hold up his hammer and tell me the same thing that Dr. Hill professes – “Remember to express gratitude every day – by prayer and affirmation – for the blessings we have.”

Sincerely,

Santa Claus

Happy Holidays everyone!