The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change Read Online Free PDF

I closed my eyes, asked those questions to the higher power I’d always prayed to, and suddenly a wave of calm washed over me.
    With 100 percent conviction, I knew that it wasn’t my time. It was a feeling unlike anything else I’d ever experienced. With perfect knowledge, I suddenly knew that I had more to do during my time here than to disappear into the frigid waters. “21-Year-Old Perishesat Sea” would not be my story. There would be no candlelight vigils or scholarship funds in my name. I wasn’t sure what my purpose was, but I suddenly knew that it both existed and hadn’t been fulfilled. As quickly as I thought I’d die, I was now certain that I would survive.
    I just had to figure out how.
    I looked through the porthole again to see what I was up against. We were nearly seven hundred miles from land, in the North Pacific, in winter—wildly thrashing against the waves. Hypothermia was a given, and one of the few tips I remembered from our drills was to wear warm, long-sleeved clothing if we had to evacuate into water. I threw on my Brown University basketball sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt to stay warm. Just then, my friends Dave and Reed charged into my room.
    Dave’s father was a pastor, which made Dave a very, very religious dude. Reed, a Texas native, was a real Southern gentleman. And Jaret was a born-again Christian from Stillwater, Oklahoma. So not only was I in the company of a new band of brothers, but traditional, chivalrous ones at that.
    “There’s mass hysteria outside, prayer circles, and everyone thinks we’re dying,” Reed said. He and Dave urged that no matter what happened, it was our duty to put on a strong front as we guided others up the stairs to the fifth and sixth floors.
    “No matter how bad it gets,” Reed said, “the four of us need to seem totally calm and confident that we’ll get through this. People will look to us for direction, so no matter how bad it gets, make sure you put on a strong face.”
    Before facing the madness in the hall, I changed into a thin, long-sleeved fleece and the only pair of light khaki pants I’d packed. If I wanted to survive, I had to swim; and if I wanted to swim, I couldn’t do it in absorbent, heavy sweats.
    I looked directly into the mirror, lifting my shirt to revealthe tattoo on my chest. Two years earlier I’d inscribed the words Ani Ma’amin , Hebrew for “I believe,” in a reverse image over my heart so that I would read them correctly each day in the mirror. They’re the first two words in a prayer that assures that if you have lived with the right deeds and actions in this life, you will be rewarded with redemption in the next. When I’d gotten the tattoo, I respected and believed in the power of faith to carry a person through his or her darkest moments, but now my faith in a higher power was truly my only lifeline.
    Ani Ma’amin . I repeated the words, praying to those watching over me, and then walked outside to face the hysteria.
    I joined Reed, Jaret, and Dave at our posts to help everyone get to higher ground while the boat swayed more violently. Once people were safely upstairs, I climbed to an enclosed area on the sixth floor and sat with my back to the elevators. Two by two, students began clinging to each other in tight bear hugs, hoping that amid the tossing the combined weight of their bodies would keep them in one place. I stayed close to Jaret and Reed as I locked arms with a girl nearby. To my left, a ship worker in his midforties who’d been traveling with the MV Explorer for years started hypnotically rocking and crying while clutching his Bible in one hand and rosary beads in the other. If he’s that terrified, this is really bad . I closed my eyes and rubbed the letters on my chest.
    Bing bong.
    Captain Buzz. He said we’d need to endure the storm while the crew did its best to compensate for the damage done to the controls, which had shut the engines down. He did not mention that he’d also put