“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

I will hit the snooze button once every morning and

Relish those precious nine minutes standing ahead of REALITY.

I will stretch my fingers and toes until

I am 10 feet tall and ready to meet my day.

I will kiss my husband on the cheek every day to make up for being apart from him these last two years. We will start tickle wars with our children and laugh until our bellies ache. We will surprise them with donuts on Sunday mornings and spend hours getting to know them over lazy Sunday dinners of kichadi and cudhi, which they will hate as children and grow to love as adults, as we did.

I will convince the business world that

A lot can be learned from marketing a laundry detergent.

I will

Bring creativity and beauty to the most mundane of products.

I will use my smile and my charisma to inspire legions of people to

DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY.
Do things with passion, without fear, with integrity.

I will NOT be Superwoman. I WILL be a Real Woman, with gray hair, wrinkles, dark circles, and a few extra pounds that mark the birth of my children, long days at the office, vacations to faraway lands, and the pain of losing loved ones.

I will leave Harvard Business School a transformed person - more open-minded, more hopeful, and more ready to meet REALITY than when I arrived.

— Bena Shah