When I was three years old, my father took me to the local library. He would tell me that readers were leaders. But knowing him, I don’t think it hurt that this form of entertainment was free.
He’d pull books from the lower shelves—the ones I could reach—and we’d sit in the children’s section together, reading word by word, my index finger tracing each one.
Both my parents speak English as a second language. In our house, the wrong word meant the wrong meaning. So you learned to say exactly what you meant—or risk not being understood at all.
I didn’t know it then, but in the patience of tracing each word, and the stakes of choosing the right one, I was learning: words aren’t just how we communicate. They’re how we become.
My coach Joe Casey once told me a parable about three stonecutters working the same marble on the same hill. A traveler asks each what they’re doing.
The first says, “I’m cutting stone.”
The second says, “I’m the best stonecutter in the county.”
The third looks up and says, “I’m building a cathedral.”
Same work. Different words. And the words changed the experience, not just of the stonecutters, but of the observer.
For years, I looked the wrong way. I read, asked, gathered—bent on doing when what I needed was a word for being.
Three words found me.
Confidence: from the Latin con fides—with faith. Not faith in outcomes. Faith in yourself before the evidence arrives.
Educate: from the Latin educere—to draw out from within. Not to deposit knowledge. To name what’s already there.
Enthusiasm: from the Greek entheos—to have a god within you. A soul set ablaze that doesn’t need permission to burn.
Confidence doesn’t need a credential. Educate doesn’t need expertise. Enthusiasm doesn’t need validation.
I had everything I needed. I just didn’t have the words.
My father didn’t give me answers in that library. He gave me language. And language, once given, doesn’t need the giver anymore. The words become your own.
The best gift you can offer someone is a word that names what they couldn’t reach. Not advice. Not a framework. A word—precise enough to reveal what was already there.
He taught me that words reveal. I learned they also return.