The Poem that Told the Trajectory of my Life as a Plebe
(a plebe knowledge that describes the course of my life last year)
this thing is meant to be a diagnostic essay on a subject i’m currently taking, and i felt inspired to publish it here.
here u go :)
I was in the ninth grade when I first read a poem that I didn’t know would be the trajectory of my life as a plebe.
This poem was once a requirement in a subject I had to memorize. To overcome, to accomplish, to complete. We were given the task of presenting it in groups as a speech choir. I remember my classmates taking it literally, with them being dressed as hoodlums, witches, and all sorts of magical creatures. This poem was once lighthearted to me, once nothing but a piece of literature written by some guy I didn’t know the name of. There are a lot of things I didn’t know because I was once young, self-centered, and ignorant. Looking back, I didn’t realize how much gravity that poem holds, and how it ultimately describes what every person goes through in their life. This poem, now that I realize it, is very timely and relevant to what most people of my age experience as a young adult.
I would be lying if I said that this poem played a major part in my development as a plebe because I was more focused on just surviving and passing through multiple endorsements, compliances, road runs, and massive exercises to the point that I trained myself to be numb. However, now that I think of it, “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley is the poetic storytelling of how a plebe survives and how a plebe motivates himself inside any type of academy. This poem is a universal feeling, a universal story of the ultimate survival in the despicable little big thing called life.
“Invictus” is surviving, motivating, proving, and most importantly, living. This poem is a beautiful story of resilience and control. It is and will always resonate through not only plebes but also everyone — the young, the old, the rookie, the master, the beginner, the completer, the wild, the calm, the imprisoned, the free — experiencing the horror and the paradise of life. We all reached a point in life where we got tired and gave up, which is okay. However, like how Henley described it in “Invictus”, we should always stand up — no matter how life compels us to give up.
The sun will always rise every time it sets. Fate may be the one responsible for all the hardships and challenges we go through, but we have the ultimate power — no, control — over how we turn things around in our favor. We write our own story, and in this one, we’re invincible.
