. . . But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us… - Sonia Sotomayor

...you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. The real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire.

Experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire.

But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire.

What Nelson saw driving me arises from a different kind of aspiration: the desire to do for others, to help make things right for them. Strange ambition for a child? Some might say so, but I’ve been aware of it for as long as I can remember. Self-aggrandizing? I’ve never felt such release from the awkward hold of ego as when helping others. Reaction to early years in a house of pain? Perhaps, but at some point I let go of my compulsion to please: it’s my own standard of character that I need to meet. In any case, I’m sure of having learned it from others, my examples. And very good ones.

I war running back to the house in Mayaguez with a melting ice cone we called a piraqua running sweet and sticky down my face and arms, the sun in my eyes, breaking through clouds and glinting off the rain-soaked pavement and dripping leaves. I was running with joy, an overwhelming joy that arose simply from gratitude for the fact of being alive. Along with the image, memory carried these words from a child's mind through time: I am blessed. In this life I am truly blessed.

You can't say: This much love is worth this much misery. They're not opposites that cancel each other out; they're both true at the same time.