***Insight*** Not the SAT but...

Life is one big classroom, everyday has a different lesson to teach us a little bit more about ourselves and our world. There's a lesson to be found in everything, you just need to scratch the surface.

Recently, I signed up to take the SAT. I was very nervous. A large part of my nerves came from the fact that I knew it was in October... but I didn't know when.

One day, my mom asked me when my SAT test date was, when I told her I didn't remember, I went to dig up my admit ticket and see what it was. Oh crap... It's this Saturday! There was no way I could study adequately enough in time.

Time is noones master, It's our friend, and it is our enemy. A wasted second is fleeting and unretrieveable. My time was spent procrastinating. When my mind didn't want to dwell on the dread thought of that wretched test, I turned to other exploits as a distraction. And what good did that do me? None. Now I would have to spend the next couple days in furious and hasty preparation.

Lesson learned.

Though I burned with desire to pass the test with flying colors and to prepare aptly, I was consumed with just as much desire to purge myself from the panic the test date instilled in me. Though I tried to study, it was as though each question was a waste of my time, as though it weren't doing me any good. I got frustrated and took many breaks to clear my mind. Yet those breaks, often too long for their own good, made me just as apprehensive; now I was wasting more precious time that I could be using to study with.

It was a vicious cycle. And every night, I put myself to sleep wishing my dreams of a superior test score would come true.

Please let me prove my worth with this test...

Then the day of the test arrived. I was so nervous, I felt ill-prepared; like a soldier sent into battle with a slingshot.

Please, let me do good on this test...

I carpooled with a good friend of mine, Tucker Robins.

We opted to take his car and rode to the Weber testing center.

Come on, please... I can do this, there's no reason I can't

We arrived in the testing center, Tuck and I felt a little solace that we would at least be able to test in the same room.

No such luck, we were split up alphabetically. There were about 35 people in my line.

Ok, those guys don't look very smart, I can beat them out... Oh dang, they look really prepared! I don't think I can do this!

Line moves slowly. Three people from the entrance my heart stops. They have ID. CRAP. I forgot mine! Ah, dang it! We took tuckers car, so I didn't take my license.

Knowing that I faced an inevitablity of not being able to take the test, I tried to spin the situation: "Let me see I-...OH NO! I-I forgot my ID! I'm so sorry, can I just tell you my SSN?"

Shot down again. I was removed from the testing center. There was no way I could magically acquire ID in 9 minutes.

I feel awful. Embarrassed. Defeated. I have to call my aunt to pick me up. She'll have be there in an hour. Why didn't I bring a jacket? It's 7 in the morning and I can see my breath.

Yet, still, I'd have to wait. Tucker was taking his test. No way for me to get home without him.

12 minutes later, a rather dejected looking Tucker comes out of the doors I'm waiting by. I call him. He doesn't notice. I call him again, this time he looks up and is startled to see it's me. He tells me that he was removed from the testing center because he too forgot his ID. He was going to wait for me near the testing center, but got tired was was just going to drive back to my house and relax. We both bust up when I tell him I'm in the same boat.

In a strangely happy way, we both drove back to my house and gave ourselves some well deserved rest from our catharsis.

In hindsight, it was a blessing, giving me a chance to extend my test date and prepare.

I wasn't prepared, but I wanted so very badly to do well on that test!

Despite the circumstances, there's something to be said about desire. Want something bad enough, and somehow the world seems to bend to that strong will. This is my new testimony.

***Insight*** Losing Luster

Looking back into my childhood, I realize how magical, open and infinite the world seemed. My dreams felt as if they were just out of reach, no matter how outrageous and there was something new to be found everywhere. Every day, every season, seemed different and vibrant in its own unique way that I had never before. Everything was like a wash of color, free of inhibitions.

Pondering my life now is almost depressing. The things that I once found amazing and amusing now seem dull and lifeless, utterly uninteresting. The seasons may cycle but they fall into a definite and inescapable routine. I'm inside all the time. I look at the same computer screen, look at the same pile of books, doing everything as if in tempo with an unseen metronome, dancing like a puppet on a string. My Master? Schedules, and time. Time is now an undeniable force. No longer can I choose to ignore it. It no longer seems invisible or unreal.

All the color seems to have drained from my life, it's now the color of a rusting antique or those last dying rays of golden sunlight in the twilight, desperately trying to live with their former vigor and brilliance, but slowly dimming and failing.

The luster life once had now seems to have vanished.

And yet, I feel as if I've heard this joke before. I may be in a prison, but there's still an outside world, even if i can't comprehend it beyond the gray, windowless walls and iron bars.

So what if I've explored every frozen crevasse of the tip of this iceberg? What lies below the icy waters? So what if I can't see anything past the flatness of the horizons I see? Does that mean I shall believe the world is flat? Am I prideful enough that I can say to myself that I have tasted all that is good in life already? That there is not more to be had? To be learned? To be lived?

There are books to read, people to meet, places to go, novels to write, pictures to paint, music to write, lives to change, skies to soar, mysteries to explore, dreams to dream, and a world to shape.

So while I know the oppression of time, and know I have obligations to fill and duties to perform, will I give in to my self-illusion of dullness? Will I doomed my life to fade into gray? If I do, I don't think my life will ever know color again.