I had the extraordinary opportunity to live in both hyper wealthy atmospheres and far more humble ones and making the transition from an area in which my family was seen as invaluable leaders to moving to the land of country clubs and designer labels where my handmade clothes became a cause for bullying and embarrassment taught me survival skills that have served me exceptionally well during my journey then on.  There is one in particular I’d like to teach to you. It saved me when I found myself in an impossible situation that had no foreseeable solution. 

It came to a head in eighth grade.  I had spent the last three years being bullied, yelled at, spat on, slammed into lockers and walls, and coming home with bruises from the high rolling classmates who spent most of their days congratulating themselves on how much wealthier they were than most people in this world and certainly superior to this dirty biracial Mexican girl from the wrong side of the tracks.  I couldn’t walk through the schoolyard or the churchyard without being slammed with insults, snubs, and distasteful looks down newly reconstructed noses.  Being awkward with glasses and braces didn’t help, and try as I might I couldn’t find anything more sustaining than a herd of frenemies and certainly no place I might have found actual solace.  And I’m not sure what changed – it was probably yet another bout of physical and emotional brutality in between classes on a random Tuesday, but I remember looking across the open school courtyard and thinking “I can’t make anyone like me, but if I have to move heaven and earth they will respect me.”  That was the beginning of something unexpected and quite fabulous.   

I took it then as a strategic necessity to find a surefire way to stop the raging abuse once and for all.  To bury my opponents beyond recognition.  I objectively assessed my situation.  I had no allies, no popularity, no physical beauty, no personal charm.  But one fact was undeniable.  I had more brains than the entire eighth grade student body put together.  And I could prove it, and with that flip my daily school experience upside down.   

I’ve always been quite proficient in literature.  I don’t recall learning to read, and something in me has always found peace and security in the glorious language of master wordsmiths of the past.  I was reading Edgar Allen Poe by candlelight in my closet by the time I was in seventh grade, and by eighth I had nearly all of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream committed to memory.  I packed my well loved Elizabethan play into my backpack and marched off to school ready to turn the tables overnight.  

It worked.  

I didn’t even have to say a word.  I simply showed up to class, sat down at my desk, pulled out A Midsummer Night’s Dream and buried my nose in the pages.  The transformation was immediate and electric.   
 
“What…?”   
 
“What are you reading?!” 

“Is that…SHAKESPEARE?!?”  

I shrugged, nodded, and turned the page in silence. The whispering around me intensified.  I paid no mind.  

 
“She reads SHAKESPEARE?!?!” 

“For fun?!?!?!” 

The whispers took an awed and almost fearful tone. You see, I was not a frightening subject myself but I knew quite well that the very name of that revered playwright would intimidate even adults into terrified silence.  I knew that and I had counted on it.  And it had worked with beautiful predictability.   

From then on, even my most passionate haters looked at me with a spot of nervousness. I kept my nose relentlessly in the same weary book – I suppose they never realized that the play I was reading never changed, not for months.  They simply saw the name Shakespeare on the cover and lightening bolts of commanding superiority issued from the pages whenever I opened them.  And when it was discovered I could quote full monologues from memory and discuss them at length when even the teachers around me couldn’t understand the language, the relentless bullying transformed into consuming fear.  I had definitively won. 

Now, you may not have an understanding of iambic pentameter but you do have something.  Something that makes you different, that places you on a pedestal, that sets you apart and which others around you cannot reach.  I invite you to perform an honest analysis of your life and find your divine spark that sets off a conflagration of change and respect.   

You may not think you have such a talent, and I get it.  Sometimes we search but we cannot find anything special about ourselves or anything that sets us apart.  And that’s a topic for another day, because I assure you, you have something – you just can’t see it yet.  But for now, I can tell you with perfect confidence of an advantage you have inside of you that you can use to rise from the ashes of whatever social difficulty you may find yourself in.  

You’re here.  

You’re here, which proves that you have an interest in improvement, in doing better, in going above and beyond the mark, and you are willing to learn about going above and beyond.  And that desire in and of itself is enough and sets you apart.  Lean into it.  Embrace it.  Allow it to seep into your pores and brighten your countenance.  We are going to uplevel together no matter where you find yourself today.  Let’s go!