" 'Yet the Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men's purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, my lord, is mine and no other man's, unless the king should come again. '
'Unless the king should come again?' said Gandalf. 'Well, my lord Steward, it is your task to keep some kingdom still against that event, which few now look to see. In that task you shall have all the aid that you are pleased to ask for. But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?' "
-(The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, J.R.R Tolkien)
"Suddenly Faramir stirred, and he opened his eyes, and he looked on Aragorn who bent over him; and a light of knowledge and love was kindled in his eyes, and he spoke softly. 'My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?'
'Walk no more in the shadows, but awake!' said Aragon. 'You are weary. Rest a while, and take food, and be ready when I return.'
'I will, lord,' said Faramir. 'For who would lie idle when the king has returned?'
-(The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, J.R.R Tolkien
Am I laying idle right now? Recently I've been mulling that over, and I think an honest answer would be yes. This year, for me, has been way more about surviving that about progressing. I aimed way more to just "make it," so that I could finally graduate and be done. I think there is way more that I could have done though.
Surely, on a small scale evaluation, I was active in some ways and aspects of my life were changed; how could they not be though? I would have to be hidden under a rock to avoid being affected by the situations at hand. That type of change isn't active though; it requires no choice or sacrifice on my part, and there is little I can do to refuse it. To not be idle means that I would be consistently involved in growing as an individual, and more importantly, preparing for the eventual Return of the King.
This year I have been more than blessed with the means to have an impact on my school and peers, but I didn't. Earlier this year, I can recall having a dream in which I led school revolution against the party scene of drugs, sex and alcohol. Whether the dream was prophetic or no is irrelevant; the fact of the matter is that nothing even remotely close to such an event happened. I think that, in a general sense, I virtually removed myself from the school setting. If one were able to alter time so as to remove me from this past school year, there would be little difference in the lives of a majority of students. Only in a handful of students' lives was I involved. My effect and legacy that will be left behind after I leave this school will be like a small puddle of water, whereas it could have been a powerful ocean. The fact of the matter is that people respond to cancer. Primarily adults do, but there are a number of kids who get it too (mostly those who have experienced cancer through a friend or family member) and though the UA community bonded together with my family through our ordeal, at a school setting, there was little difference. What would I have desired to be shown? I wish I would have made the effort to exemplify the brevity of life to my peers. There are only a handful of people who get it at the school, who understand that they are not, in fact, the most important person to exist, and who understand that life is not about living for continual self-satisfaction. It infuriates me when I consider how much alcohol is consumed on a weekly basis by students at my high school, how much weed is smoked, how many girls are taken advantage of, and how many drunk drivers are on the road. I do not know in the slightest what I could or would have done to try to get my point across that almost all of my peers are utterly wasting their lives by striving to reach for that next "high," literally and figuratively. It has always struck me as unbelievable how Upper Arlington, a school district with some of the brightest kids academically, can fail so miserably in raising kids accurately in the social sphere. Whether anything I could have done would have made a difference in anybody's life or not, I'm not sure, because again, high schoolers are dumb and care only for themselves. It would take a great deal of effort to break through the wall students put up nowadays, through which they pay no attention to anything they believe wouldn't happen to them. High schoolers are invincible, under no circumstance will they be part of a statistic.
While I may have failed at making an impact school-wide, or class-wide, my closest friends at least, have grown with me in adapting to new life scenarios, and recognizing that life is more than the short-term. But our growth together can be its own topic altogether, and so I'll leave that for its own individual post at a later date.
When my life ends, and I stand before my King at the Judgement seat of Christ, to be rewarded for how I used the resources and life circumstances that I was given, I cannot help but wonder if this year's events will be my greatest failure of stewardship from my life. Perhaps it will be, and perhaps it is not. Obviously, I am writing this from my own perspective, and as such, I may be unaware of what actually occurred at school this year on account of God's work in my life and through my family's lives. I can only write about my perceived notions though. So, again, maybe I have failed and maybe I haven't. In either case though, I have come to understand even more the concept of stewardship. Certainly not fully, that will likely take well beyond my life to grasp, but I learn more and more each passing year.
Ultimately, this blog is the only way I consciously chose to try to leave an impact around my school. It has been written in some way for my own benefit, but also in the hopes that some student will stumble across it, and find some value in it. I have a passion for the students at my school, I care about them, and I desire for them to receive every great thing that has been planned for them in this life, but watching them waste away in the fruitless passions of wild parties, is terrible. My hope is that somehow, someone could have grasped the concept that life is both incredibly meaningful, and incredibly short. Jared is 22, and Abbey is 14, but both are battling potentially life-threatening diseases. Even just a year ago, neither one saw their disease coming about in their lives, but yet, it is there today. As the quote goes, "A life is a terrible thing to waste," but yet that is exactly what I see happening amongst, at a minimum, 80% of the students at the high school. That number is drastically enlarged if one were to factor in those students who live for academic achievement, which is, perhaps, just as much of a wasteful use of time, as drinking.
In summation, I feel like I may have wasted what was without a doubt the most blatant resource in my life, however, there was still some victory and achievement in this area too; namely, through my friends, and this blog. Any potential impact that stems from last ditch efforts to leave a positive legacy at the school, instead of my current title of video-game master, will likely never make its way back to my ears, but it is, quite obviously, my desire that something stems from what I have documented through this blog.
