Finding Your Inner Value

I watched, along with about four hundred other students, as my previous PE teacher stood on a chair in the middle of the school gym. Next to her stood a sixth grader who was only four and a half feet tall. He looked like an ordinary student and nobody expected anything different to happen. The sixth grader grabbed my teacher and tried to pull her down. Surprisingly, a little kid like him managed to do so without much effort.

The roles were then swapped.

The sixth grader climbed onto the chair while my PE teacher stood on the ground. He grabbed her hands and tried to pull her up. He pulled as hard as he could. Interestingly enough, he failed to do so. The same person who had been able to pull a much larger person down could not lift that person one bit.

At the time, I gave it no more thought than a funny demonstration. But it became clear to me that it was a demonstration of what we see in everyday life—it is much easier to pull someone down than it is to lift them up.

Middle school is where I think this is most obvious.

Middle school is an interesting place. We’re all old enough to think that we understand the world, but young enough to care about things that probably won’t matter several years from now, and technically still don’t. But even so, students are constantly trying to figure out who they are, where they fit in, and how other people see them. Everyone is focused on being “cool”.

I’m in eighth grade, and like most middle schoolers, I get how important people find popularity. In school, students aren’t judged by how smart they are, how hard they work, or how kind they are. Instead, the meter is whether they have a phone, whether they’re allowed to go to Safeway without their parents, whether they go to school dances, who their friends are. Those are the roads to popularity.

To an adult, popularity might seem like a joke. Why would going to Safeway by yourself determine whether someone is cool? Why would having a phone make someone more important? Why would going to a school dance matter so much?

But when you are actually in middle school, these things can, and do feel like they mean everything.

There is an invisible but universal hierarchy in school, and everyone seems to know where they stand in it. Sixth graders are the youngest and often feel like they have no status. And as students move through middle school, their status changes. By eighth grade, you are suddenly one of the oldest students. Younger students look up to you, and there is an expectation that you should act a certain way. Eighth graders are expected to go to dances, have certain things, know certain people, and participate in whatever happens to be considered popular at the moment.

Then boom, you’re in high school and suddenly none of it matters.

That is one of things that really confuses me in growing up. Something can feel incredibly important while you are experiencing it, and then in the span of a year it’s meaningless.

The problem is not that students want to have fun or feel accepted. Wanting friends and wanting to belong are completely normal. The problem is where people use those reasons to justify treating other people like objects.

If someone does not go to a dance, they are boring. If someone does not have a phone and if someone does not participate in whatever everyone else is doing, they’ll start to believe that there’s something wrong with them.

And once people start believing in that lie, they get dragged down further.

This connects back to what I saw in the gym. Pulling someone down required little effort whereas lifting someone up required much more. I think people can and are the same way.

It takes nothing to make a person feel less than they are. A single joke can embarrass someone in front of an entire class. A comment can make someone question whether they belong. One rumor can spread through a school faster than fire, without any validation. You need not be stronger, smarter, or more talented than someone to make them feel smaller. All that’s required is someone to watch you.

Lifting someone up is different.

It requires effort and patience. It requires courage to compliment someone when everyone else is making fun of them. It requires confidence to stand beside someone who is being excluded. And sometimes, lifting someone up means refusing to participate when everyone else is trying to bring someone down.

That is much harder.

I think another reason people pull others down is because it is easier than looking at themselves. If everyone is focused on who is cool, who is popular, and who is doing the most interesting things, nobody has to ask harder questions.

Am I working hard enough?

Am I becoming a better person?

Am I learning?

Am I doing something that I will be proud of years from now?

Those questions are much harder to answer than, “Am I popular?”  

Popularity is an easier measurement. It’s easy to see who has the most number of friends, gets invited to the most parties, or has the newest phone. But intelligence, hard work, and dedication are much harder to measure. They require patience. They require failure. Something that people are too cowardly to accept. Most importantly, they require you to persevere, a quality few people possess.

That is why it can be so tempting to stay focused on popularity.

If you give up caring about what everyone else thinks, you have to find something else to care about. You have to decide what actually matters to you. Maybe it is getting better at a sport. Maybe it is learning something difficult. Maybe it is creating something. Maybe it is being a good friend. Maybe it is working toward a goal that nobody else understands.

Those things do not always receive immediate attention.

Hard work does not always get applause. Intelligence does not always make you popular. Dedication does not make you look cool. These things have their rewards later in life. That’s why even adults can never stick to one thing for long. They go to the gym for a month at the beginning of the year. And by June they’re sitting on the couch wondering why they paid for the entire year.

But that does not make effort meaningless.

In fact, I believe that is what makes it meaningful.

Middle school teaches us, mostly the hard and to those who are willing to learn, how powerful other people's opinions can feel. But that power is given to them by you. And it can be taken away too. Because other people's opinions do not determine your value. You do.

And this lesson is not limited to middle school.

Adults may not worry about school dances and such, but people never outgrow the desire to be accepted. The standards simply change. Instead of worrying about who is popular at school, adults might worry about money, careers, social status,or appearances. The details change, but the pressure to compare ourselves to others can remain.

The people who make a difference are not always the loudest people in the room. They are often the ones who continue working when nobody is paying attention. They are the ones who fail and try again. They are the ones who refuse to let someone else's opinion become their identity.They are the people who choose to lift others up instead of pulling them down.

And maybe that is what I should take away from that demonstration in the gym. The sixth grader could pull my teacher down because pulling someone down is easy. But lifting her up was a completely different challenge. It required far more strength and effort.

Life is the same.

It is easy to tear someone down. It is easy to make someone feel small. It is easy to follow the crowd, laugh at the joke, and convince yourself that it does not matter.

What is difficult is standing on your own.

Middle school will end. The dances will end. The trends will change. The phones will become outdated. The people who seem important today may become strangers tomorrow.

But the person you become will stay with you.

And when you know how to value yourself, you can finally start using your strength to lift other people up. Because the people who refuse to give in to that pressure are often the ones who make the biggest difference.

Toshani Singh is a middle schooler who enjoys reading, writing, and socializing.