AT SOME POINT… NOBLE.

I wish I could put this in any cooler way. But anyway, let me bore you with an ordinary introduction.

I fed on accounts of Campus Invasion for the last two weeks. As I listened, jotted down, re-wrote, revised and re-everything to construct them into a published work, it felt like some sort of a “Pensieve” pulled me in and took me to the same scenes that these people went to. I don’t know if I should blame the pitchers of coffee I’ve been drinking, but my heart pounded when they relived the jumpiness they felt. I walked with them, sat on the far corner of the class room and observed the kids fiddling on their books and chit-chatting with mates as if they have not seen each other since Christmas. I sniffed on the very same smells that stung their noses. I held back tears when I realized that the students bustling along the corridors were living without a purpose. My hair rose as well, when the Holy Spirit pounced on every soul within the crammed boxes.

I was fortunate enough to catch sparks from the consuming fire they (Invasion team) harbored. Incidentally, it caused me to fly back four years ago. I dreamt of a group of friends in school campuses. They were college students. Comparing from their current  selves, they were a lot younger, perhaps a little bit snootier; some had bad hair cuts, a goofy stance, T-shirt clad or in uniform, pock-marked with blemish, either thinner or fatter, starved for skipping lunch, and with almost-empty pockets.

But it didn’t bother them. They were happy to come together every Thursday and go from one school to another to introduce Someone to them.

You can bet that they don’t always liked each other. There’s this snobbish, private-schooled git who has an insane attitude problem, a tall kid who’s the master of late, a bright and happy bowl of sunshine, imposing brainiacs who argued about everything, an out of school whiz, and a lot more of misplaced characters that wonderfully complicated everything else in between.

It’s a miracle they have stood long enough, because no one could ever say how a few shakes and shifts made them find friendship with each other. I can only theorize that Someone held each of them on a string and pulled them all together. Distinctive and dim-witted of these working-class heroes is that they mastered a genius math of GETTING MORE BY EMPTYING OUT.  

Imagine kids who live only on the luxury of their allowance, ambitiously trying to take care of high school students (free emotion outrage inside!) who would love them and hate them at the same time. Notice their blood-shot eyes due to their habit of staying up late just to woo the brood of new-found prince and princesses for as long as they would like to be taken cared of. Look at them; squandering what’s left of their meager money just to catch a glimpse of their brats, and getting even more brats to share The Light with. How thick could they get? But I guess they possess a different kind of Drug that tickled them mad.

Watching from a nearby table in a poorly sanitized canteen, I saw them all out in their crazies, laughing so hard that it was embarrassing. They talked long after they finished their lunch (if that was satisfying at all to be considered so.) They weren’t a glamorous picture to hold, yet a happy gleam danced on their eyes. They were a bunch of idealistic kids. Idealistic, oh yes. But before you judge them, you have to know that in their idealism sprouted hopes that root deep and composed better songs to sing before they fall head-first on a pool of dream-killing reality.

They went on with this vice for some time. They took on new adventures and discovered treasures untold.  And if you would flip the pages with me, you’d see scribbles that told secrets of growth. Some notes were a blotted mess; they made mistakes too, of course. Here and there are sticky notes of lessons learned, and doodles of new faces that came along with them. In a considerable skip of the book’s spine, we come to new pictures that showed them moving along in pursuit of paths that leads them to new things. We know not what they will find when they come to the end of their stories, but maybe, on a good day, they would reach deep inside their pockets, and find a tattered reminder of one of the most noble stories ever told.