Heroic

As I've been sitting here for the past week and 8 minutes, struggling to find the right words to explain that my life was altered on Friday, I realized that I cannot tell you how.

I can not tell you how Spencer Nelson literally handed my life back to me in an envelope

or how it was that my self was restored by a question Janine Paulson asked me,

or how it happened that my being was recovered and reminded by Michael Gray.

It is too sacred to me to expose the how's and wh

y's; to tell background stories.

But I am willing to explain the foreground stories. The story of our futures, or what we can see of it anyway.

Pictures courtesy of Chloe Ann Mehr

Struggle: To make forceful or violent efforts to get free of restraint or constriction.

On Friday, January 21, 2011, every person who attended the Hero Assembly came out with an assurance. Assurance that there are heroes sitting next to us, not because of a logo and a cape, but because of a heart and a mind. Because those sitting in the auditorium realized that they themselves have the potential, no, the incredibly likely fact that they can become heroes. If only they so choose.

Courtesy of Chloe

SO many names upon the walls, not just the people spotlighted, but ones nominated, the names that were submitted.

Meaning: kids in our school took the time to grab a piece of paper, deliberate on a name that represents somebody who was HEROIC to them, write that name down, walk over to the locker, and turn it in.

People took time to do that for a lot of other people.

Names written down representing those people who have helped by some unknown, irreversible, and deep-seated ways.

Names that represent people who have struggled and have broken free.

Breaking free? What even is that?

It's an inner battle.

It's a struggle with something on the outside that is only the facade of a true battle.

The real battle is within. The battle to do good over bad. The battle to decide who you are, what you want, who you'll become, who you'll change over who others tell you you are, what you want, who you'll disintegrate into.

The battle is of who you really are in retaliation to who dictates what you are.

It maybe your family, friends, poverty, drugs, lying, underestimating, denying, running. or even your own self.

Winning the battle equals breaking free. Winning the battle against everything and everyone who tries to tell you who you're NOT.

"breaking free" is just another way of saying that The person who you ARE has finally decided to choose the good, to choose the right. Breaking free is the final act of winning the battle within and seeing the light.

Saturday, I was with one of the greatest boys this world

He doesn't believe the depth he possesses, therefore unable to believe in the being that he is.

I can't believe I felt the same as he did just barely.

I can't believe he cannot see himself the way I see him.

Yesterday I was with one of the greatest girls in this world.

She doesn't believe in the being that she is, therefore unable to believe in the potential that she owns.

I can't believe she cannot see herself the way I see her.

All of these people, all of these inner battles, all of these names, running around on this earth trying to find themselves, scrummaging for any hope, any remnant of a trace of themselves, desperate for a mirage of who they think they are in all of the dysfunction and confusion of the world.

When all we had to do was look inside ourselves to find ourselves.

Alexandre Dumas, one of my favorite writers, once said, "There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life."

It is by our own standards that we dictate what our happiness is. No one else's. It is, in fact, impossible to determine our lives based on another's. Who is the world to say what joy means to you?

Happiness, then, our own responsibility.

Responsibility scares people.

Friday was a beautiful day in so many ways unseeable.

I'm grateful to you, all of you!

I hope I'm better prepared for the next struggles I'm bound to face in this lifetime. But the next time, it won't be about finding who I am. It'll be about finding who I'll become.