"Gate #32....."

      
              There are so many stories in the book 97: Random thoughts about Life, Love, and Relationships by Justin Lookadoo. I found one about Justin boarding a plane. “I was going through airport security with my skydiving rig. I had it packed in a bag-for some reason people get nervous when you hop on a plane with a parachute strapped to your back, so I packed it up. Now the way the reserve parachute is rigged up, it looks like a bomb in the X-ray machine. There’s always a big fuss. It has to be X-rayed several times. And then they will pull it out of the bag to make sure it really is a parachute. I knew it was coming, so I was ready for it.” Here comes the good part. “As I went through the metal detector, I told the lady standing there that the bag the man was about to look at was my parachute. She told me to go tell the guy. So I got his attention and told him about the rig. And in the rudest, most arrogant, jerk-face way he snapped, ‘I know how to do my job. I don’t need you to tell me how to do it.’”

Later on in the story Justin recaps what happened. “This dude just popped off that he knew how to do his job and he didn’t need any help. If he stopped to call someone to check what he saw, then he would look like an idiot. See, your pride is the only thing that can make you an idiot.” He then goes on to explain how confidence is cool, but cockiness is not.

I once heard a line that went “Egotism is the only disease that you can get, that makes other people sick.” I will always remember that line because it’s so very true. If I let my pride or my ego stand in the way all I’m doing is setting myself up for failure, as well as making the people around me sick of me. If all I do is focus on myself then nobody will want to hang out with me because that’s all we’ll talk about is how great I am.

That seems to be one of the main problems in high school is all the egos. The football team thinks they’re better than the cross country runners. The cross country runners think that they are better than the football players. The swimmers think that they’re better than everybody. Everybody thinks that there sport is better than swimming. It’s a never ending cycle. Do we really have so much pride in our sport that we forget that all the sports here at Kearney High School are for the representation of the talent we have as a school district? It seems to me that we have forgotten the big picture and instead have broken it down into smaller pictures that we can focus on individually. There are even different teaching departments that even though they seem to be joking are seriously playing against each other. There are even some posters that announce it. “Thou shall not place any other school work before math.” “You are to place no other subject before science.” Everybody thinks that the things they are interested in are far more important than another person’s interests. While I believe it’s good to have a joking relationship and a competitive lifestyle, sometimes it’s good to place other people first on our priority list. I know back during 8^th and 9^th grade year it was extremely hard for me to become number two and let somebody else become number one. I loved the feeling of being on top. I still do, there is nothing more rewarding that having a great pride in yourself, or the work that you do. It’s when we begin to let the pride blind our eyes that’s when problems start happening. Our friends and family start disliking us because everything we do is for the glory of ourselves. Its one thing to have others lift you up, it’s another to start lifting yourself up.

I know that I was going somewhere with this reflection, but I can’t remember where. Maybe I was just tired of hearing “you would not believe what the football boys just said about running cross country…” or “that shouldn’t even be considered a sport…” Maybe we should all grow up and realize that there are other people out there with different opinions than us!