The Ancient Ones

When I was a freshman in high school, I looked up to the seniors as these all knowing people. They were the "old ones". The ones who never made mistakes, and the ones from who's examples I would learn from. I really did look up to them, and was in a sort of awe of them.

I was in high school for four years, but now that it's over and done, it felt like four seconds. I was a senior once. I was one of the ones who the freshmen class would look up to, but at the time, I didn't feel wise and all knowing. I didn't feel like anyone should be looking up to me. When I was there, I didn't feel any wiser than I had been four years previously. But those incoming freshmen, they were still in awe of my classmates and I. We tried to be good examples, like the seniors before us had, and the seniors before them.

It's like one of those things that you pass down from class to class, generation to generation. A good example to the younger students. An example of discipline, respect of one's teachers, and a true interest and joy in your subjects. I had my nine months of seniorness, and I gave it my best shot.

And now?

Now I am a freshman again. The cycle starts all over again, it would seem. Now I see the seniors in NSA, and I see how much I still have yet to learn. The college student has a great ability to get his head puffed up. He's just completed twelve whole years of high school, and now he's on to bigger and better things! Hah!

But the seniors have learned that there is more to life that lording one's status over those who have yet to reach his level. They know that on the grand scale (on the smallish scale too), he still has so much to learn. True, he's made it sixteen years through elementary, junior high, high school, and now college, ... but that's it. Sixteen years. And do we ever stop learning? No, we don't. Sixteen years out of the average 80 years or so of life is less than a quarter of one's life.

And still the college freshman walks around with his backpack slung triumphantly over his shoulder, sunglasses on, and sauntering around like he knows the secrets of the universe.

Oh make me not like him. May I never lord my (lack of) knowledge over those younger than . May I never forget my place in time. And may I always thirst to learn more from those far wiser than I.