I don’t really know why I have to write about the drive behind writing this essay. Whether or not this article is recognized by others as being important, it is emotionally something that I have to do. Whether others deem this significant isn’t the issue. I’m doing this to address my hauntings.

I have written before about how most of Rod Stewart’s songs resonate within me. Rhythm of My Heart is surely one of them.

Stewart is reflecting about his past and his home long ago. I have three adult children and an adult granddaughter. They have much of their lives settled down. While they are working hard at addressing various issues like getting more education, experience, etc., they have been and are successful. On the other hand, I have two grandsons who are beginning their journey down the yellow brick roads of their lives…in elementary school. Nevertheless, they are safe and happy with the beginning of the journey with parents that love them. I have no doubts about all my family continuing to do well in life. They are smart, talented, gifted, and lucky having been born here in the States.

Nearly five years ago, I traveled to Myanmar (Burma). It was my best trip overseas in my entire life. I have gone to school overseas and taught overseas. I have done many trips all over the world. I have seen much of Europe, Asia, Southeast Asia, Indian subcontinent, South America, and several islands in the Pacific. After returning to the States following my first trip to Myanmar, I had a routine appointment with Dr. Marchand, my cardiologist. I was fine; I have taken a little white pill for years that controls my blood pressure…successfully. Dr. Marchand said that I was fine but asked whether I had any questions. I did…a haunting question. I wanted to know why I was so driven. When he understood that something changed within me in Myanmar, he looked at me and said, “You have seen the light.”

There were two events in Myanmar that radically changed me. I met and interviewed Min Ko Naing in Yangon. I also met Moh Moh who was my tour guide in the Inle Lake area. She introduced me to her family. I spent time with Ko Ko, her husband, and went to a preschool daycare where Snow and Fatty attended. However, I also met Ti Ti.

Man, meeting Ti Ti was a life changing event. Ti Ti was nine at the time. After playing Scramble with her for an hour, I realized that I had met my granddaughter.

During winter break this year, I returned to Myanmar and spent the best week of my life with Ti Ti and the rest of the family.

This essay is about what drives me, and it is connected to the rhythms of my heart. My physical heart is fine. This is actually an echocardiogram of my heart. Dr. Marchand is happy with it.

Nevertheless, this essay addresses the rhythms of my emotional heart as it relates to my family in Myanmar. Moh Moh, Ko Ko, and the three girls drive me. When I was last in Myanmar, I gave Ti Ti my laptop, which I only used as a storage device for photos and videos that I took while in the country. However, my gift to Ti Ti has limited use in Myanmar due to inadequate Internet reception.

In addition, I realized that I had an extended family who are the children that attend the two schools that my granddaughters attend. That realization set my mind to dreaming. Laptops with improved Internet bandwidth is the only means by which an emerging country, like Myanmar, has in developing their next generation in the 21st century. There is no other tool that can be used in a country that has recently emerged into the global community.

We Are Family in Myanmar, Inc is a not for profit charity. I am at the very beginning of a fundraising drive for purchasing 1250 laptops for the children of my extended family. I estimate that it will cost me approximately $400,000. The remaining $100,000 will be spent on improved Internet reception to the schools and supplying technical support for the school.

If my first trip resulted in being wired, this past trip has me on steroids. I plan to return to Taunggyi, Myanmar where my family live, and my granddaughters attend school in just over a year after raising a half million dollars. Many of you are saying to yourself, Campbell can’t possibly raise that much money and do it in a year.

To be honest with you, I’m aware of that overwhelming task. Trust me; I am filled with excitement and fear.

Bobby

However, Bobby Kennedy was my mentor. Much of who I am is due in large part to Bobby. He said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” I am fully aware of the reality that I might fail. However, without trying, I have already failed.

I know in my gut what Teddy Roosevelt meant in Man in the Arena.

Amid my fear of failure, I am excited about daring greatly. I will never face life like “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

While you are wondering about me, when I say that I follow my mentor, Bobby, rest assured, I do. For decades, I have used on all my email’s as my signature Bobby’s statement, “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.”

Bobby talked about how we are to act in the world in which we find ourselves. However, he assured dreamers this truism. “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” His words resonate within me.

I have done the dance with death a couple of times successfully, and I am 75. I am fully aware that my clock is ticking. Therefore, I won’t waste a moment making my positive mark in this world. Or as Bobby said, “Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after. In due course, each generation makes its own accounting to its children.”

Now, allow me to return to Rod Stewart’s Rhythm of My Heart and read the last verse.

My family is spread out in America, but I have a part of my family in Taunggyi, Myanmar. My place called home is in Crown Point, IN and in Taunggyi, Myanmar. My extended family that number 1250 young students will be getting laptops that will function with improved Internet service.

And, if Rod Stewart and Bobby Kennedy resonate within you, click on this link and promise me three things about which you will read. It can change your life as it has mine.

We Are Family

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