More About Good Ol' High School

"...and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf."   ... 2 Corinthians 5:15

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It's odd.

Yesterday I wrote about At Seventeen and high school, etc., yet I didn't re-mention that I'd attended 3 high schools. Yes, three.

And well, for super-shy me, starting over at each one felt like torture, what with the not knowing anyone (though at the first school, I'd met my youth group kids 2 months earlier, but even so, I spent lots of lunch hours alone in the library.). The not-knowing my way around or the unwritten rules every school has and not having a knack for breaking into years-forged cliques--well, each school presented a sort of nightmare. The first 2 months, especially.

And yet now, all these decades later (and referring back to At Seventeen) I still recall in all 3 schools the many non-pretty/handsome/rich kids who became ultra-popular, respected and loved. Each was friendly toward others, cheerful, with a good, kind sense of humor and open to fun times. 

And though they could have chosen self-absorption and self-pity because of their average looks and homes, they didn't. Nor did they wait to be asked out for a good time--instead-- they created the good times wherever they went. Not in loud, look-at-me ways, but more in the way a foundation holds things together (if that makes sense). 

They gave instead of insisting that others give to them. They drew from wells inside themselves rather than waiting, begging to be watered by everyone else.

And I guess that's partly what bugs me about At Seventeen--it's so darn full of self-pity thinking:


I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens...

The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful...

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone...



Yes, that's how it was for many, but it was not must-be-truth, but rather, chosen behavior and thinking. And avoidable.


From each of my 3 high schools I recall  'average students' (even ones with 'ravaged faces') who we wanted to hang around because of a warmth radiating from them on the inside, a warmth which grew as they did in learning how to treat the rest of us even more kindly, as well as themselves.

Self-pity paralyzes. It tells us Life cannot become better so we, in turn, don't even try to improve any of it. Self-pity keeps us alone lest we step out and get rejected, it makes certain we remain on our own minds so--without realizing it--we become selfish, not caring, not daring to lift another person up. Self -pity lies but calls those lies, truth. It tells us it's all we have and all we can expect. Forever.

Anyway. As I did say yesterday, God can heal all that. Trust me--I know from personal experience and oh! Being healed by God brings pure freedom and a joy worth having and giving away.




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"Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."  ... Matthew 16:24





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Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have,more than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '. 

..... Stephen Fry