I never stopped to enjoy the "moment" in my career. I had too much anxiety. Going through these memories I realize how lucky I am to have come from poverty. In some ways I am a walking miracle. I am not some rock star that made millions of dollars. I am not someone that was able to go home and giggle about their job and the people they worked for. I had some good bosses and some not so good bosses. Nobody kept me from my mission to serve other people and my profession. Though I didn't stop to enjoy the moment along the way, I now have a lot of contentment and self-satisfaction. As I live out the last part of my life, I don't know that I ever will be able to appreciate anything I have done. But, I am very grateful to the students who allowed me to work with them and those that bought the goods I was trying to sell and used them and improved from it. That's when I said, "At a boy Willson!" I am grateful to every single one of them and wish that I had done more. You are not good compared to other people; you are good compared to what you could have done. Had I sought help and really worked hard to get through depression and the trauma I grew up with I might could have done more. On the other hand, compared to what I started with having almost no money, no tutoring or private lessons, or someone to read to me and that kind of support, I am a walking miracle. I owe almost all of it to the medium of band. It got me involved with people whom I never would have been involved with otherwise, and it gave me a tool to go to college. I was motivated to go to college and succeed so I would not be drafted to go fight in Vietnam or have to return home to live in the negative environment I grew up in. I was lucky to have three phenomenal mentors in my life. In my 46 years, I had some great students who taught me more than I could ever teach them. Every Friday afternoon when I spoke to the band I said, "I want you to look at each other, I want you to smell the aroma in the air, look at these beautiful buildings behind you and the sun setting. Tomorrow, I want to you look at the people you are with and impregnate your brain and remember and enjoy the moment. College is fleeting. The adult world is waiting and puff, this part of your life goes by in a flash. I remember sitting at the table in the lunchroom in Greenwood after teaching for several years and thinking I would never continue in the profession. Now I am turning around and not going back to work, and I just can't believe that it is over, and my life is so close to the end. I hope that when I am gone, I will at least be content and know I made a difference in a few people's lives. Nobody kept me from enjoying the moment of helping other people. I gave my students all I had - Every day in Every Way!
