As I sit here on Martin Luther King day, my feelings are conflicted. I am in the United States but more specifically, I am in Honolulu for a speaking engagement. I know what you are thinking. I am writing this to brag. Honestly, I am not. I am writing this to reflect on the fact that for almost 33 years, I have received a paycheck to speak, 25 of them as my own business owner.  Clearly, being in Hawaii is awesome but my location isn’t usually this exotic. In fact, I have said some not nice words driving in a raging blizzard skipping past an approaching tornado, but mostly just being on the road. I have dedicated my adult life to hopefully making a bit of a difference with people and their perceptions of being human.

i like to think that quoting other influential people in a speech is a tip to their impact but in all the years, I have only consistently quoted one…Dr. Martin Luther King!  I sometimes get a funny reaction, especially if I am addressing an audience of people of color, let’s be honest, black folks. I am not meaning to offend. I am also not what my son used to call “a poser”, an expression describing someone attempting ingenuous. Some of my favourite people are black and they live in Antigua, where we just spent some down time. They are not “African American” and I say that because for many, that expression became a politically correct version of racist descriptions of Color and if you use that phrase with pride and authenticity, good for you. I mention this for one simple reason.

When I was a kid, growing up without arms in rural Saskatchewan Canada, we didn’t get much press and certainly not from around the world. But I clearly remember my Dad talking about this powerful man stirring things up in the Southern United States preaching, protesting and standing up for equality. It was clearly an issue of race and being white, I guess my credibility might come into question but I have no arms. That has been my identifier. I have been called “crippled, disabled, handicapped, physically challenged (sorry but way to PC for me) and experience a kind of prejudice that profoundly affected me.

in 1966, my parents fought to get me into a so called regular school right across the street from our home. The longer sorry is prominently featured in my book but the short one is the school was afraid because they had never tried this. A student with no arms! But try it they did and succeed I did and because of that, I grew well beyond the expectations of but a few, my parents in particular knew all along what I could be. But we didn’t win because we fought. We won because we truly appreciated the opportunity to take our shot. We won not because we wanted to beat someone else. We won because karma was on our side.

As the world recognizes a great change agent here’s what I am thinking; my beautiful and intelligent and amazing wife, Darlene and I are spending a few days in paradise here to work for an incredible client, the Young Presidents Organization (YPO/YPI), have travelled the world together and I have spoken to over 2,000,000 people on five continents. I have come a long way from little Yorkton, Saskatchewan. I owe a great debt to an incredible man who said so many great things and my quote is this one, and I paraphrase…”To dream of a world where people are judged not by the color if their skin, but the content of their character”! Thank you Dr. King.