A Hundred Years From Now.

[SSScout 1615]

I dunno, I just feel moved to post something that was used in another thread some years ago.   This is the original,  it is often "adjusted"  to allow for certain sensitivities, but I always like to go back to the original.... 

Maybe not appropriate for a ScoutsBSA Troop SMMinute, maybe more appropriate for an IOLS or Wood Badge Scoutmaster Minute, or maybe an EDGE Training session, but worth  putting away in one's  back pocket, "just in case"...

 

 Within My Power

By Forest E. Witcraft (1894 - 1967), a scholar, teacher, and Boy Scout Executive and first published in the October 1950 issue of Scouting magazine.

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I am not a Very Important Man, as importance is commonly rated. I do not have great wealth, control a big business, or occupy a position of great honor or authority.

Yet I may someday mold destiny. For it is within my power to become the most important man in the world in the life of a boy. And every boy is a potential atom bomb in human history.

A humble citizen like myself might have been the Scoutmaster of a Troop in which an undersized unhappy Austrian lad by the name of Adolph might have found a joyous boyhood, full of the ideals of brotherhood, goodwill, and kindness. And the world would have been different.

A humble citizen like myself might have been the organizer of a Scout Troop in which a Russian boy called Joe might have learned the lessons of democratic cooperation.

These men would never have known that they had averted world tragedy, yet actually they would have been among the most important men who ever lived.

All about me are boys. They are the makers of history, the builders of tomorrow. If I can have some part in guiding them up the trails of Scouting, on to the high road of noble character and constructive citizenship, I may prove to be the most important man in their lives, the most important man in my community.

A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove. But the world may be different, because I was important in the life of a boy. 

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