built on: “Each of us – parents, advocates, educators and legislators – has a responsibility to help children fulfill their potential and achieve their dreams. That is why I have devoted my life to this work.” And on: “We believe every child has the right to thrive.” André Agassi
Many years ago I had the chance to be invited by the watch company Longines to assist a Roland Garros tournament in Paris and at the same time, interview André Agassi and his wife Steffi Graf.
I was the last of 13 journalists to interview him, all others of Asian origins. And he offered all of us 5 minutes of his precious time, where he was totally with the journalist he spoke to. His presence hit me.
Now, I don’t know what it really was when I came out of the interview, but a big revelation came to me. I understood that Andre Agassi and his wife were outside of the system. In a space where potential reigned. A place where same energies meet. And I suddenly understood that the system’s job was it to hold us in fear. For as long as we fear something, feel separated, we give it all our power. I visioned a glass-clock (system) in which we’re held, and I understood that the system doesn’t want us to experience our strength and start to spread our light. Andre and Steffi’s lives with all their undertakings were my first live-examples of this tiffany. André with his school and Steffi Graf with her Stefanie Graf Foundation ‘Children of tomorrow’. Richness and joy, a life of contribution. What a beautiful vision.
André’s life mission has become education. His half public- and half private school in Las Vegas meets an immense success. It is a school built on gratefulness and appreciation. No one there works for the obligation but for the inner call of progressing and expanding and help progress. On helping each other advance. Imagine, on many weekends, students and teachers meet even outside of the official school hours, for the pure joy of learning together and sharing precious moments together. The girls of the school made almost the whole Longines assembly cry later that night at a gala dinner, when they told us their lives, their experiences, where they came from, where they are now thanks to someone caring for their education, and what their future plans are.
It is one of the stories I have told dozens of times already to my friends, as for me, telling the stories that make us grow, understand something, is the biggest gift we can offer someone.
