A Sweet 16 With a Front Door

My daughter turned sixteen last week. She wanted the dress, the decorations, the dancing, the Marie Antoinette theme, the whole thing. She is sixteen. She should want that.

But on the invitation, where it might have said "gift registry," there was a link. She asked every guest to donate to Dress for Success Greater Baltimore instead of bringing her a present.

Dress for Success provides women with professional clothing and interview coaching as they prepare to enter or re-enter the workforce. Mira found them by typing "fashion" and "jobs" and "women" into a search bar, and fell in love with an organization she did not know existed.

She raised over $1,000 before her first guest walked through the door.

I write and speak about three things: duty, purpose, and self. Duty is what keeps the world inside your front door working. Purpose is what moves you to make the world outside it better. Self is what you must protect so you can keep doing both.

Most sixteen-year-olds are building the self. That is appropriate. That is the job of being sixteen. Learning who you are, what you want, what you enjoy, what makes your heart flutter.

What struck me about Mira's decision is that she did not sacrifice the self to do this. She had the party. She wore the dress. She danced with her friends. She had exactly the evening that five-year-old Mira would have imagined for sixteen-year-old Mira.

She just also opened the front door.

I asked her why. She said something I cannot improve on: "It's a very small change to make to add a link on an invitation, and I think the fact that it made such a big change is a little sad, but I do think that it's important."

Purpose does not have to replace joy. Sometimes it just needs a link on the invitation.

To donate: sweet16forsuccess.org