If I had to pick a favorite month, January is it. First, just the feeling of newness and hope with a new year brings a new chance. Truthfully, I do have these leftover TO DOs from 2012, but ideas and plans keep rolling my way as I think about the big possibilities for a new year. Much of those possibilities derive from another wonderful part of January, the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Recognizing the birth of one of America’s most remarkable persons gives me the opportunity to challenge my own ways of living.
With almost every one of Dr. King’s ideas, comes a demand for greater responsibility for our time on Earth, or as King noted, “The time is always right to do the right thing.” King’s simple but totally profound eloquence on service defines this wonderful month: “Everybody can be great…because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
And that brings me to the third reason for January qualifying for favorite month status, January is National Mentoring Month. In the spirit of King, National Mentoring Month provides us the opportunity to begin personal transformation through the investment of ourselves in the life of another person. Conceived and promoted by the National Mentoring Partnership, National Mentoring Month sets forth ways for a “life on a life” to bring dramatic transformation within the mentee and the mentor. For Communities In Schools, the most powerful force for goodness occurs when a caring adult commits quality time to a child. Relationships bring hope and change. National Mentoring Month exhorts us to go beyond ourselves as people not just with money, but by allowing ourselves to touch and therefore be touched by another. While you are looking ahead to the start of our new year, remember the importance of January and then think of a person in whose life you can make a difference.
Neil Shorthouse, President, Communities In Schools of Georgia