Who are the influential people in your life? How have they contributed to your development as a person?

There is perhaps no other person on this earth who has had the same influence on my life as my grandfather. He was humble, yet a man of conviction. He was raised on a small farm in Pennsylvania and received no college education, yet he was the most “well read” man I have ever met. But perhaps his greatest legacy was his ability to empathize, and to teach.

This fact was apparent when, throughout my childhood, I would stay and help work on his farm. Waking up before the sun rose, He taught me a work ethic a long and demanding lifetime of manual labor had afforded him. We bailed hay, fed horses, woke cows, cleaned stables, planted seed, and tended to delicate saplings. With his guidance I marveled as I guided animals into life through birth, and despaired at the loss of life through death. It is through these hardships that I discovered that toils and suffering were not there to set one back, but rather that they were there to become one’s strength.

It is said that over 95% of communication is nonverbal; instead, understanding is grasped through actions. My grandfather was living proof of this. Some days he would only speak 4 or 5 times, others not at all. Through him I learned the most important skill for communication, and that is silence. In silence one can truly listen, and the ability to truly listen to and understand someone else is the foundation upon which true communication rests.

The experiences I had with my grandfather will cling to me for the rest of my life and have already shaped so much of who I am today. Without him teaching me to struggle I could never have hoped to begin to flourish.