They are axioms, adages and proverbs we've all heard many times. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind. True beauty lies within. You can't judge a book by its cover.

Like many of you, I thought I'd learned the lessons contained within these nuggets of wisdom long ago. I believed I could easily look past the wrapping paper and spot the gift within. I thought I knew a lot about myself, but Susan Boyle came along to prove I'd been a poor pupil in the classroom of life.

By now there is hardly a living soul who doesn't know the tale of Susan Boyle. She was recently a contestant on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent."

The 47-year-old Scottish woman stepped in front of three judges, including the acerbic Simon Cowell, and said she'd always dreamed of being a singing star. The audience snickered. The overweight, frumpy woman looked more like someone hired to sweep up the auditorium once the show ended than she did a bona fide contestant.

Boyle sang "I Dreamed a Dream," from the Broadway smash "Les Miserables." Where seconds before had stood a woman to be pitied, now there was a stoic angel singing in a voice forged in heaven. Her perfect pitch and feel for the song's emotion quickly won over the crowd. Snickers were replaced with cheers. Cheers quickly gave way to their rhyming cousins -- tears.

Sources from www.niagarafallsreporter.com

By the time Boyle hit the last note, the crowd was on its feet paying homage to her greatness with a standing ovation.

Boyle said she'd never been kissed and lives alone with her pet cat. She detailed how she had struggled with a learning disability as a child and was ridiculed by other kids throughout her formative years.

That back story has a lot to do with the phenomenon that Boyle has become. Boyle has achieved something greater than celebrity, however. She has transcended ordinary fame. Her performance on the show moved viewers to tears.

When I first watched the video, I was transported back some 30-odd years to when I was a young teenager. I relived the feelings I had then, feelings of isolation and desolation. I remembered what it felt like to think I must be the ugliest person on the planet, a person no girl could ever love.

I knew I could write. I thought my ability to string words together might be my only salvation. I thought my poetry and prose could serve as a buffer for the hideous outer shell I felt God had cursed me with. I dared to dream, but was haunted by the nightmare that my dream might die untold.

I was not alone in that world of loneliness. The millions of responses to Boyle's video online reveal tortured souls. If pain is best managed buried, then Boyle's performance served as Easter Sunday for the masses. Here is a small sampling of what her moment in the sun has wrought:

"These barely six minutes of TV are like every feel-good moment of every Disney movie ever put together. Perfect. She doesn't just have a great voice, the whole performance is fantastic, misted me up and gave me the shivers."

"This is why everyone has been so completely blown away by this woman, because for some reason it's all come down to the fact that if you're not beautiful, you don't count."

What type of a ride will fame take Boyle on now? She's already undergone a makeover. People are clamoring for her to put out a CD.

Here's hoping Boyle won't change too much from the honest and sincere soul who had her musical debut at the ripe old age of 47. Without knowing it, she has served the part of sage.

She's reminded us of what Antoine de Saint-Exupery's fox first taught the Little Prince:

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

Here's a wish that Susan Boyle lives her dream of being a professional singer and that her dream allows her gentle soul to go unblemished. I, along with millions of others, wish a multitude of things for her, but none more than the desire that she never know the reality of the heartbreak contained within the last verse of the sang she sang for us all:

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living.
So different now from what it seemed.
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.