Friday, January 25, 2008

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Right now I am on a Family Leadership Conference called Abbott. Each day we have been going to different businesses and learning how to run a company with core values and honesty. Today we went to the HEB Headquarters, Zachry Construction Company, and Overland Architecture Firm. After the time spent at the architecture firm we headed to lunch at an incredible Mexican Restaurant (we are in San Antonio so we have already had Mexican food two times!). There we sat at tables of ten and one of the partners of the firm sat at each table. We had a very unique man at our table. He graduated from Yale as an English major, then moved to the Ivory Coast to serve in the Peace Corps. Upon his return to the States he took online classes to get his MBA and began in the boring world of investment banking. Itching of boredom, he returned to school again and studied architecture. Now he works at the amazing architecture firm that created the Bonfire Memorial. After telling us that he challeneged us to not live a normal life. He talked to us about a book he read whe he was a kid called "Harold and the Purple Crayon". He told us about Harold, a young boy who has a purple crayon. Anything he draws becomes his life simply by drawing it. The architect related the discovering of the crayon to his discovery of the world such as going to Yale and servig in the Peace Corps; a time of discovery! Harold begins by just drawing boring lines; the architect related this part of the book to his investment banking stint (ha!). As the story continues Harold begins to draw all sorts of adventures and finds exciting things to fill his time. He draws a boat to get him out of trouble and draws a yummy snack when he can't take the grumbling tummy pains! The architect, like Harold, found adventure when to chose not to become complacent with "just drawing lines." He has found his true passion when he chose to pursue something beyond just where he was at.

Three things I love about this:

1. The fact that Children's Literature found its way into a "grown-up" conversation.
2. One thing the architect didn't mention was that while Harold had all these adventures, he found comfort when he drew his own house and his own bed!
3. The irony that 2 days before, in Barnes and Noble, I had picked up this book to read for this class because it looked cute. I never expected it to teach me a lesson like this! Even more ironically, I brought it in my backpack on the trip. Needless to say, as soon as I got back to the hotel, I picked it up and read it for myself!

1 comment:

Hyangmi said...

Be sure to read the criteria for blogs: you are supposed to post at least three entries per week. Check Vista for your grade.