Some people are incredibly lucky. They're born to families and communities that have access to every possible resource known to humankind, to meet every possible need -- emotional, mental, physical, financial, and spiritual. Name the need, and it will be given. Better yet, it will be given even before the need is known.

Other people aren't quite so lucky -- homeless, loveless, friendless. Instead of growing up with praise and encouragement, they get criticism and rejection. Instead of being taught how to enrich their lives, they're taught how to cope with them. Woe to any of us who may have life at that extreme; more than likely, we're in between -- lucky in some ways but in others not.

For the moment, I will call him my mentor. He diligently tries to fill whatever gaps I may have acquired in my journey through childhood.

There are days when he passes the time by looking out the window and pointing out who's dead and who's alive. Drive down a neighborhood that's ill-kept and overrun with dark and menacing types. See the children playing along the street. He'll point to each of these children and announce very off-handedly, "Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead."

Then he'll spy a child walking with a purpose, with clean clothes and bright eyes, books in his arms and a parent's wise advice in his mind. "Alive."

He makes sure that I'm one of the living ones, and for this I thank him. Without him, I might now be working as an office clerk somewhere -- my eager mind and natural talents given to waste in a job that slowly sucks the life out of me. "Dead."

You deserve better in life.

But most people don't know that if no one tells them.

My mentor tells me.