Citadel

In high school, I had the formative experience of existing beyond the bounds of what is generally a polarizing criteria: scholastic skills. Mostly what seemed to occur is both the "A" students and the "not goin to college anyway" kids formed their own mutually exclusive cliques. Somehow, I was able span the divide, leaping across and then back again at my fickle whim. Less endearing is the view that I was just a smart kid who did many dumb things.

Regardless, being good at school landed me in all the honors and AP classes, hermetically sealed off from the delinquents I ran with extra-curricularly. In these classes, I was surrounded by academic peers who on the social plane either towered above me or were like ants below, depending on one's sense of morally (and legally) appropriate behavior for teenagers.

This situation led to a number of idiosyncratic interactions. One occasion found my AP English class in tumultous conversation during some free time. Here they murmured pensively, in this corner they exchanged tense looks and rigid half-sentences, across the aisle some students commiserated loudly. The whole class swelled with concern like a rolling sea, while I sat in their midst as unperturbed as a lone rocky island. My isolation wasn't new; most of these kids knew I didn't exactly fit in. Some of them were secretly annoyed that I nonchalantly thrived grade-wise while they put in the effort.

"What's goin' on?" I asked a particularly high-strung over-acheiver.
"What? What's going on? Are you serious?" she responded, unsure if I was genuine.
"Yeah. What the hell are you all whinin' about?"
"Whining? Don't you know what's all due tomorrow?"
"No."
"Yes, well, we have our essay in this class, our quiz in AP Physics, a ..." she reported tersely, tallying five or six things we were responsible for the next day.
"Oh, for real?"
"Yeah, didn't you know?"
"Naw, not really"
She smiled half-condescendingly, half-piteously. "There's no way you're going to get all of this done and get ready for the quizzes if you haven't at least started," she cooed. "Aren't you worried?"
"No."
She froze like a PC running Windows, once she saw that I was serious. I could see her wheels spinning intensely but they were unable to grip the terrain. "Wha--How? What are you going to do? It's all due tomorrow."
My well-read classmate utterly misunderstood me. I didn't really know what I was going to do, I only knew exactly what I wasn't gonna do.
"It's like this," I began. "Whenever they're all breathin down my neck at once, whenever they pile it on, trying to make me sweat, whenever I got a ton of crap all due, I always do the same thing."
"Yes, what?" she demanded, needing to know the secret to my success.
"I don't do none of it" I smugly replied. She was speechless.

***

As foolish as my asinine advice appears, buried magma-deep is something partly true. Taking our sights off of the laundry list of worries can potentially be the panacea to cure all our woes, provided we scope out the right thing. I was advocating ignoring life's struggles; but without a clue as to what we should focus on, I was only indulging short-sighted peace, not conquering obstacles.

"I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways." -King David in Psalms 119:15

Here we encounter our object; God's ways, to be stared at, peered at, squinted at, even glared at. Victory is found in who God is, but first, we need to take our eyes off of the immediate. It's counter-intuitive, and you may stall for a moment while you consider it like my poor classmate. But press on in prayer, as the practice of reorienting our visions onto Jesus can develop into a rampart capable of overcoming all of life's troubles.