I stood on the smoothly carved shell that consisted of the gym floor, waiting. Waiting for something to happen, waiting for a ball to miraculously fall into a hoop, waiting for the world to suddenly rush in, with pandemonium in the crowds, all cheering for my name.

Except, this is all untrue. I dislike and am not good at sports in the least bit. In fact, even the very hypothetical idea of my succeeding at one is merely an analogy. What I am trying to say is, a few months ago, I viewed the world to be, from my standpoint, an easy journey, at least when it comes to success. The main catalyst for that was due to all the struggles I’ve gone through. I felt as if they were simply trials and tribulations that make up for and balance all the rewards that some intangible force hands me in life. I’ve already been handed many things. A family that supports me so much financially, that I am still left jobless, carless, and able to take guitar lessons, to be tutored without having to pay for all of it on my own. I have talents that seem to glow with such fluorescence that those around me who try to practice the same field only seem like mere field mice, while I’m the lion of the musty desert framework, dry yet bold, stretching out for miles and miles away as I admire my gold-encrusted crown. Last but of course not least, there is my amazing ability to think deeply, to study life, its people, and its splendor and understand it almost perfectly in every viewpoint possible. I know what people want, are going to do, and are thinking. Not to mention my intelligence, which I also find to be glamorously constructed—flawed in some ways, but perfectly made up for by a deeper factor that is quite hard to describe. Aristotle would have taken one look at me and denied my fact as an intellectual. Yet Emerson would have felt a life force in me that was so strong, so significant, that he would not have helped but to be intrigued. I had to work myself up to have friends and perhaps a few other things I’ve overlooked, but that’s it.

Yet all that was simply a coincidence. Perhaps a mind game by some higher power to lead me on. To pull my strings and manipulate me like a marionette in an old-fashioned puppet booth. I’ve come to realize that my talents, my intelligence, and all the gifts that I have perceived to be simply brilliant will never be recognized without an education. That is the way society works, with its many brainwashed drones, or so I view them as, tinkering and utilizing the same old black-and-white way of life, shoving those who paradox it either way out in the dumps, or forcing us to conform. In my own world, I was a rockstar. I was the proverbial prophetic poet, standing on a podium as gallantly as I could on my hypothetical purebred high horse, while I recited my poems as the whole crowd, like in the basketball statement, roared with such pandemonium, I could feel the very ground I stood upon, the ground that was flashed out by a spotlight, to shake. I was the Orpheus, a writer and a musician that melted souls with my words and touched eardrums with my tunes.

But really, who would recognize a writer without a college education? Who is to say that out of all the non-classically trained, “I do it my way and want to rock ‘n roll” musicians, that I am to sprout out among them and be one of the lucky ones who actually succeeded, instead of sitting on the ground in a suburban downtown area, bumming for spare change while strumming restlessly on my worn-down acoustic guitar? Oh, was I so, so delusional. Oh, was I so, so immature. It is okay to dream, but not to the extent where your judgment and vision of the world is so clouded, that it is nearly impossible to pop out of the little bubble and learn to flow with the real cycle of human life? Oh, was I so, so, lucky to realize it then. Oh, am I so, so, lucky to have gotten back onto my feet while I was still young enough. Oh, am I so, so, lucky to have the viewpoint I have now, though a bit distressing due to my having to learn to work hard without being handed caviar on a crystal-coated silver platter just in the blink of an eye, it was an awakening. And indeed did I wake up from this child-like, delusional dream that I still have in my heart as of today, but less dominant on the part of it taking over my entire mindset. And with that, I am actually very very content.