Cheers to the Outcasts

The lunchroom table was quite lonely. While you stared at your food, you could feel everyone’s eyes stare at you. Their laughs were loud but their hate was louder. Sweat trickled down your back and sweat formed under your armpits each second. The note from your mother wishing you a nice day sits crinkled in your lunchbox so none of your classmates know that your mom still writes you notes.

Your head sinks lower and lower as each minute passes just hoping for the lunch bell to ring and then you can escape into the departing crowd as for once you could feel a part of the crowd and not like an outcast. Outcast, what a funny word. I guess it means you’ve been cast out, out of what, “society”?

Before they selected me to be an outcast but now I have selected to remove myself from many of society’s normalcies. You see I have come to understand that you have to be a little un-normal to be great. You cannot be great by accepting average and doing average. And being great is simply outshining yourself each day. Society’s opinions, traditions, and standards become irrelevant when the only person you want to impress is yourself.

Cheers to the folks who wake up early in the morning to work out, work on a project, read, or do any activity to improve their lives. Cheers to the odd ones who forgo temporary pleasure versus internal bliss. Cheers to the ones who are not dragged from celebration to festivity and back without an ounce of reflection. Cheers to the thinkers, inventors, and mentors who strive daily to improve themselves and their craft with the goal of improving others. Cheers to the minimalists and the quiet geniuses. Cheers to the ones who fall and get back up.

The lunch table taught me that I could go at it alone. At first, I was forced but ultimately embraced the time I had alone with myself. So cheers to the ones sitting at the lunch table alone, because it will always take more guts, fortitude, and resolve to go at it alone than to be a clone of mediocrity and fear. Fuck the table. Cheers to you.