I Believe in You

I have a terrific wife and two great sons. I am a fairly successful lawyer. I have lived in the same house for 16 years and married to the same supportive woman for 25. Things are looking pretty good. But it hasn’t always been that way.

As a high school drop-out at 17, there weren’t a lot of people who were there when I needed them. There weren’t a lot of people who believed in me, nor did I much believe in myself. But life’s road has some interesting twists and turns and as I look back where I came from I can see the faces of people who had faith in me, people who saw things in me that I could not see myself. I hear their words of encouragement still today: “I believe in you.”

The four most powerful words in any language are “I believe in you.” When my vision was clouded by matters that seemed important to me at the time, matters that blinded me and kept me from seeing what life had to offer me, someone would throw out the rope and pull me back from the edge of despair. “I believe in you.” When as a young man I found myself in Vietnam scared to death of dying I hear the sergeant now. “I believe in you.”

When I thought that I would never make it past the junior year in high school, a chance run-in with a complete stranger after I had too many drinks one night, suddenly said to me, “You know, I don’t really know you that well, but maybe you can’t hear what you are saying. You know what you want. You know where you are going, and even if you don’t or no one else does, I believe in you.”

When I felt hopeless and was about to give up ever wanting to be a lawyer I heard the voice of my father-in-law saying, “I believe in you.” When I think of the many times I took the bar exam, struggling to make ends meet and watching all of my wife’s friends buy their first house, have jobs, start their families and I knew that I had to give up my dream and start supporting my family, I can hear loud and strong my wife’s words of encouragement, “I believe in you.”

I have learned over the last 50-plus years that it doesn’t really take a lot to give someone the “spark” they need to get through the tough times, to get their life on track, to make something of themselves. It doesn’t take expensive technology or fancy tricks or speeches with empty words. All it takes is to look that person in the eye and say “I believe in you.” Four simple words that have the power to change lives. It did mine.