– Danielle Schulmeister

The stories we read
All begin with an action
All heroes have an origin
And our enemy is time.
Will we have time to read each other’s stories
Time can be an ocean
Of minutes, seconds, hours,
Or it can be measured in the things we choose to do, the people we choose to love, and the places we choose to make our marks on

Making strides is what we do
We pave the way for our children and grandchildren
We innovate, inspire
Desire our time while we still have it
Quiet spaces of study, turn into playgrounds
Where children are free to be imaginative
To dream of a world where everyone can just live
Instead of worrying about how to live

Sometimes things change quicker than we all would like
And for some of us, time has a nasty way of telling us to slow down.
To cherish the moments that we have together
To remember the things we’ve accomplished
To realize how far we’ve come
Together

A Bill of health can tell us to slow down
It can tell us how much time we have left to make our mark
Or it can tell us that we’ve done what we can

We’ve made a change; Together
We are all different, all the same
Accepted no matter what our backgrounds are
We make up a patchwork quilt, diverse in all its colours as the world is
Woven together like the story that began us
All different, all connected, all the leaders of a better tomorrow, our own destinies
We just have to start writing
This is our origin story