When Maggie graduated high school, her parents let her take a year off to backpack through Southeast Asia... and she never came back.Instead, she wound up in Nepal. While traveling through the region, she witnessed the terrible toll that war and corruption had taken on Nepali children; the country was full of orphans. So what did then- 18-year old Doyne do? She called up her parents in Jersey and asked them to wire over her life savings-- $5,000 in babysitting money. She knew 5 grand could go a long way over there... and it did. Doyne built the Kopila Valley Children's Home in Nepal and now, at 22, is the guardian of 24 orphans, has sent 60 kids to school and has placed 700 orphans in homes.
Can you believe it?
I didn't, until I saw Maggie Doyne accept $100,000, at the Do Something awards last night at the Apollo Theatre. I didn't, until I saw her cry when a picture of a dozen or so Nepali orphans flashed across the screen and she said, "I promised myself I wasn't going to lose it...but then I saw my kids up there..."
my kids.
22, mother of 24. I'm 21 and can hardly take care of myself. As she stood there on the stage, this totally unassuming, petite, fair-skinned blonde was surrounded by a spotlight that formed a sort of halo around her thin frame. I thought to myself, This is what an angel looks like.
She kept saying how humbled she felt, to be the recipient of such an enormous sum, to be selected out of a group of such deserving, accomplished candidates. Humbled? Really? (Humble: from the Latin, humilis, meaning low, from humus, meaning earth. In a sense, to bring one back down to earth, to plant one's feet back to the ground where you started; back to when you were just a seed in a pile of dirt). I sat there thinking, I'm the one who's humbled. What the hell have I done? Granted, circumstance, personal choice and so many other things (chance, fate, karma?) have so much to do with why she plays mom and why I just play. And then she said:
"It all starts with a yes."
Every true act of compassion, courage, love, service starts with a yes, despite the misgivings and qualms that come with most acts of honesty. You've got to start from the ground up. And here I am, thinking that a quarter of my life is already over, and I've already experienced most of the Big Moments that will punctuate my personal history...but maybe I'm still a seed. Maybe all this time where I thought I was growing and branching out, I've only been sprouting, stretching, warming up. I'm not saying that one day I'll run off to a foreign country to save the children. But there's no time limit to the call of your heart. So in the meantime, I'll be here, listening.
