Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment. Barbara Angelis De

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       SECRET NUMBER TWO The Purpose of Life Is for You to Grow into the Best Human Being You Can Be

       My favorite place to go is where I’ve never been before.

      ANONYMOUS

      When I was nine years old, I fell in love with a doll I saw advertised on television. The TV said the doll cried real tears and even wet her diapers—it was appropriately named a Betsy-Wetsy Doll—and I was determined to have it. After much hinting on my part, my mother agreed to buy the doll for me, and so one Saturday morning we set off for the neighborhood toy store. I shook with excitement as I entered the shop and saw that it was overflowing with trains, Tinkertoys, teddy bears, every imaginable object of a child’s fantasy. I was sure I had arrived in heaven!

      It didn’t take long for me to spot Betsy-Wetsy waiting for me on the shelf. I scooped her lovingly into my arms, promising to change her diapers as often as needed. As I walked down the aisle toward the cash register, a display of brightly colored boxes suddenly caught my eye. I stopped and gazed in wonder at the title on one of the boxes: ENCHANTED CASTLE—A PLACE WHERE ALL YOUR DREAMS CAN COME TRUE! it read in glowing gold and purple letters. Beneath the headline was a picture of the most magical castle I had ever seen. The castle looked like it was made of silver; it seemed to rise several stories from the ground, and was covered with towers and turrets and moats. There were tiny windows everywhere, and my imagination went wild: I pictured a starry-eyed princess who lived in luxury peering out from those windows, longing for a glimpse of her Prince Charming, who, naturally, was racing toward the castle on horseback to carry her off to a land where they would live happily ever after. I stood there transfixed, sure that destiny had brought me into the toy store so that I, too, could make all of my dreams come true. I had to have that castle.

      My poor mother didn’t have a chance. I begged, I pleaded, I used every persuasive power that a seven year old has (which, in my case, was a considerable amount), and finally, she gave in. I walked out of the store with Betsy-Wetsy under one arm, and my Enchanted Castle under the other.

      The car ride home was a blur. All I remember is racing up to my bedroom with my treasures, carefully taking them out of the paper bag, and placing them on my bed. I held Betsy in my arms for a minute before laying her down off to the side. After all, Betsy was just a doll, but in that box was an Enchanted Castle, and even at seven, I knew to choose magic over real life any day. Besides, I knew Betsy would understand. I carefully unwrapped the plastic covering from the large box, and opened the cardboard flaps. Slowly, with trembling hands, I reached into the depths of the box to lift my castle out of the darkness.

      The Pieces of My Dreams

      There was nothing there! I couldn’t feel a thing in the box. No towers jutting up, no flags flying on the roof. In fact, there was no roof at all! My heart pounded as my little hands reached deeper, and deeper, until finally, at the very bottom of the box, I could feel a pile of tiny objects. I spilled out the contents of the box and there before me, littering the top of my lace bedspread, lay the two hundred and seventy-seven pieces of the Enchanted Castle, ready for assembly, along with several tubes of model glue, paint, brushes, and a twenty-four-page instruction booklet.

      I sank to the floor and stared in shock at the confusing mess on my bed. I felt completely crushed. I had expected a beautiful, magical castle, and instead I’d gotten a pile of plastic parts. Now my dreams would never come true. I began to sob the deep, hopeless sobs of someone who has decided the world is a cruel and unfair place.

      Just then, my mother knocked on my bedroom door, and when she heard me crying, she rushed in and took me in her arms. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she asked with a concerned look on her face. “Aren’t you happy with your presents?”

      “It’s, it’s the cc … cc … castle,” I stammered. “It’s not right.”

      “What’s not right about it?” my mother questioned. “Here, let me take a look.” She got up and stood over the bed. “Let’s see, they included glue, five colors of paint, good … brushes, and here’s the instructions. Honey, everything looks O.K. to me.”

      I listened to her in bewilderment. How could she say the castle looked O.K.? “But Mommy,” I sniffed, “the castle is all in little pieces. It’s not pretty and fixed like the picture on the box.”

      My mother pulled me toward her and took my hands in hers. “Barbara,” she said softly, “There’s nothing wrong with the castle. It is supposed to come in pieces like that—that’s the whole idea. It’s a model and you are supposed to put it together. See, honey, here’s the instructions, they show you how to stick the pieces that fit onto one another. And then you put a little glue on them so they will stay that way, and when it is all glued together, you paint it with these paints, and you’re all finished, and the castle will look just like the one on the cover.”

      “But I thought it was supposed to come already made!” I shook my head in disbelief. “You mean I have to put the whole castle together myself? That ruins the whole thing—it will never be as good as the one in the picture. And besides, because I’ll know I put it together, it won’t be magical at all!” And then I burst into more tears.

      Putting the Castle Together

      I don’t remember how long I ignored my castle. I know that I put it back in the box that night and left it on a shelf in my closet. I was furious that it hadn’t come already made, that I was expected to do something to make it work. I decided that Betsy-Wetsy was the one for me after all, and spent my time pouring water into Betsy’s mouth and waiting for it to come out the other end so I could change her diapers. I soon grew tired of cleaning her up—after all, how many times can you change a rubber baby before the thrill is gone? So one afternoon, I found myself taking the Enchanted Castle out of the closet and placing it on the bed. I opened the instruction booklet and began to read.

      It took me several weeks to build my castle. At first, I was very frightened. “What if I make a mistake?” I thought to myself, “and glue the wrong pieces together? What if I can’t figure out what goes where? What will I do if I can’t understand the directions?” It wasn’t long before I found out the answers: I did make mistakes, and had to unglue dozens of little plastic pieces and reglue them in the right place. I did get confused at certain points, and had to ask my mother to help me out. But as the days passed, and I could see the beginnings of a castle forming before my eyes, my fear turned into excitement, the frustration turned into challenge. I would race home from school so I could work on the castle. I would secretly stay up way past my bedtime gluing and assembling, and when it was almost finished, painting.

      And then one day, it was done. I sat on my bed and stared at my Enchanted Castle in its place of honor by the window. I knew that it didn’t look exactly like the castle in the picture—the paint was СКАЧАТЬ