We are Here!

I love the messages that can come from simple places - books and movies and....cartoons. I recently watched HORTON HEARS A WHO again with my nieces. Now, if you are not familiar with this Dr. Seuss-based story, let me fill you in a little. Horton is a fun-loving, faith-filled elephant who finds a clover with a speck of dust on it. He hears a voice form the speck and comes to find that an entire town, "Whoville" lives within the speck. 

No one else believes his insistence that there is life on the speck, and Horton ends up needing to prove the existence of the "Whos" to all the other animals. So that everyone can hear the "Whos" and know they exsist, the "Whos" make noise and yell over and over, "We are here! We are here! We are here!" Now, you may think I am sappy, but I always have to try not to cry at that point in the story. I was wondering why that is, and realized that it reminds me of something said by Elder Marion D. Hanks: "Every human being is trying to say something to others. Trying to cry out, I am alive, notice me! Speak to me! confirm that I am important, that I matter!" 

Every once in awhile, I want to yell out my window "I am here! I am here! I am here!" But I don't.  Because I don't want my neighbors to kindly offer to drive me to the nearest shrink. But I always remember, as Dr. Seuss so eloquently stated in his story of Horton and the Whos, "A person's a person, no matter how small."