For the first time, we have two winners of the coveted Gamey in the same month. They are Ty’Sheoma Bethea, an eighth-grader from South Carolina and Leonard Abess, a banker from Florida, both of whom were recognized by President Obama in his state of the nation address last month.
Bethea wrote a letter. It was what she could do and she did it. In that letter, she maintained of she and her classmates, “We are not quitters!” And that letter changed the game.
Abess had $60,000,000 in the bank, proceeds from the sale of his company. He gave it away to 471 employees and former employees who’d supported him over the years. That gift changed the game, too.
She gave a small gift that became something big. With that one letter, she opened a thousand doors that would have not been open to her otherwise.
He gave a big gift that got bigger. The number ‘60,000,000′ didn’t change, but the potential for that ‘60,000,000′ to make things happen in the world increased overnight by a factor of 471.
We honor Ty’Sheoma and Leonard because they bookend three important elements of gamechanging.
Big gifts and small gifts are equally important to our scenes. That’s the first piece of what these gamechangers teach us. All gifts have the potential to inspire profound scenes.
Here is the second piece: Action flows from character. Beathea and Abess didn’t just wake up one day and shazaam!—in a puff of genie smoke, suddenly turn into the people with game.
She is a young woman who wants to learn, and doesn’t want to be held back from it. She is a writer of letters, and a righter of injustice. She is not a quitter.
He is a friend who values friendships that go all the way back to grammar school, a manager with employee relationships that extend beyond current staff, a player who recognizes that he owes much of his success to others on his team. He is not greedy.
They took actions that were consistent with their characters.
And here’s the third piece: We can never know for sure how the game will change. But if we bring what we can to our scenes…if we are consistent in character and action…we can trust that, as Ty’Sheoma Bethea and Leonard Abess showed us, the game will change, as unforeseen opportunities bloom into new and fruitful realities.
Tags: , Character, February 2009, GameChangers of the Month, Gifts, Leonard Abess, Ty'Sheoma Bethea