For the Kid Who DIDN’T Get Acknowledged This Awards Season

It’s that time of year. End of the school year. Time to acknowledge all the “mosts” and “bests.”

Most valuable. Most improved. Highest average. Best in sports, math, second languages, music, debate, character, virtue, integrity, helpfulness, setting an example… best in being the best of the best.

Superlatives abound, and at every gathering, exemplary versions of today’s youth are carrying away certificates, plaques, trophies, ribbons, medals, cords, and tassels.

And exemplary versions of today’s youth are not.

I know one of those exemplary overlooked youths very personally. I can’t understand how others don’t see what I see, but I know it to be a fact in her case. Therefore, I know it to be a fact in the cases of many, many others as well.

I suppose it’s simply impossible for finite humans to acknowledge every aspect of what borders upon infinite uniqueness in the variety of traits, attributes, gifts, talents, skills, and efforts imbued in an entire generation. I’ll acknowledge that to be true. Still, we do enough of the pointing out and awarding that at this time of year in particular, those who walk away empty handed can’t help but feel as if their absolutely adequate (and ultimately essential) existence just… isn’t.

This isn’t a post to oppose honoring effort or achievement. Believe me, it isn’t. Nor is it a post to support the now-ubiquitous “participation trophy.” Maybe that means something to a four-year-old just starting out in this world of competition, but to the more experienced, it quickly loses any luster and even rubs worse at the wound: Here, have a prize just for existing because there’s nothing else nameable about your worth.

What is this wound that comes with being overlooked? I think most of us at some point experience it—a longing to be seen, known, accepted, affirmed. And when we aren’t, the wound deepens. And when we try harder—serving a favorite mentor, teacher, parent, coach, friend—even joining our goals to his or hers—and then get skipped in the ceremony, it can feel like a blow of an existential nature. 

Have you ever had one of those days in traffic when your car seems to be the invisible one? Someone changes lanes and almost side-swipes you. Moments later, another person turns in front of you and in a screech of rubber-on-asphalt, you barely prevent the inevitable T-bone. While you wait patiently at a red light, the car behind you almost rear-ends you as if there really was an extra car’s length before that painted white line signaling the boundary of safe existence before the intersection. 

Does it make you want to scream at the universe, “I exist!”

Stephen Crane, an American poet who is considered part of the “Realism” movement, wrote as much:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” the universe replied,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

Does the overlooked athlete who showed up at every practice unless (s)he was too sick or injured, who ran coach’s errands and refused to be unsportsmanlike to the teammates carrying a sickening sense of entitlement for fear of damaging the overall esprit de corps want to say the same thing?  Or the plugger of a student who took the hard classes and studied late and managed a solid GPA along with extra-curricular activities but not only didn’t receive a single scholarship applied for but also didn’t get accepted to more than one of the schools applied to? Or the kid who not only managed to pass everything with effort, but also worked a job outside of school to help pay for his/her basic necessities and managed never to be tardy—not even once—but no one noticed that. No one noticed the kid who stayed off drugs all through high school though the parent in the home didn’t set the same bar of expectation for him or herself. The quiet one who never ran for student government but held the door without fail for the kid on crutches, picked up the paper towel on the bathroom floor instead of adding another to it, whispered, “I understand” far more often than spoke, “Why didn’t you…?” The faithful, persistent, diligent background people of all levels of performance and participation—but unseen. Unacknowledged.

As a youth in my own life, I had a foot in the camp of each of those. I made good grades and got acknowledged for that, but there was so very much more to me that no one saw way back then. As I have now reconnected with several from my childhood and teen years, I feel pretty confident in saying that we were all that way: known for one or two characteristics but nothing at all of the great width and depth to each of us. It’s far too easy to just attach a label to a person and think that’s enough. It isn’t.

When I look back, I see myself as just an embryo then, but full of potentials unseen, and longing to be known for all of me. I was not particularly athletic—and still am not, though I would love to be—but I was exuberant and positive about others’ performance and efforts, and so, in keeping with my personality, I tried out for and was voted onto one of the cheerleading squads at my school for most of my teen years. It was far too important to me—all out of proportion for its actual value—but it was an area that I felt equipped for and wanted to be integrally important to. There was one year in which I did not make the team and I felt crushed for it. I remember an older girl turning in her seat in math class to ask me about tryouts the day after decisions were made. “T,” I said as bravely as I could, “I didn’t make it.”

“What?” she responded, with genuine surprise. “Something is WRONG,” she said. And that’s all she said, but it helped. I had not been seen, but T, right then, saw me. No one else ever said a thing about it, and I suffered, at the time, through that year of being cut off from the activity that I loved, and tried again.

At the end of the next year’s season, at this time of year we're in right now, awards were being given, and for the first time ever, that year, I did receive an award for my part on the squad. The trophy still stands on the dresser in my childhood bedroom in my father’s house.

“Most Dedicated,” the plaque at the bottom reads.

I don’t recall exactly how that award was chosen. I don’t recall if it was just my squad-mates voting, or if voting included team members from the sport we supported, teachers, coaches, etc. I do recall that when I returned to my seat with the trophy, my hands shaking a bit, my sweet squad-mate J turned to me and said, “I never even thought of you!” She didn’t mean it in a negative way. In fact, she went on to affirm that OF COURSE I was the one who deserved that honor—“OF COURSE YOU DID,” she said, but again she emphasized, “I never thought of you for it though.”

And that was so honest that it stuck with me. I really was there. I really did exist. I was showing up to practice and games, staying on, doing my part, doing the extras, putting notes of encouragement into cubbies on game days, painting banners, putting myself out there in every way I knew how to do—and not being seen for it. “I never even thought of you.”

But the fact that she, a friend, a good person who cared for me, didn’t notice my consistency in that area did not in any way take away from the reality of the fact that I was there and doing my part and that it mattered. 

Nor does the absence of an award in this season for any of the non-acknowledged youth who have been showing up and doing their thing faithfully for the last four years in any way take away from the reality that they matter. And it most certainly doesn’t mean that their existence and value and uniqueness will never be seen and acknowledged either.

In fact, it already is. 

Oh, to believe that high school is just going to be a dusty memory one day, and that all the shining you’re going to do is still ahead. The opportunities to be the “you-est you” are still coming and you’ll rise to meet them—maybe even surprising yourself.

But even now, today, this moment, I wish I could make you know that you’re seen. Seen, loved, accepted, sung over loudly—and being used. Even when the limited humans surrounding you aren’t seeing clearly, loving well, accepting fully, acknowledging joyfully, or opening doors for you they might have authority to open—
There’s one who does, who knows exactly what he made you for, who is guiding, developing, directing, and providing. He’s not a cold, distant, clockwork universe without a sense of obligation to you. He’s a personal Creator and a Good Sovereign who refused to move into the very future he rules over without his beloved individual human children in it. He was called “the God who sees me” by an outcast who had received no favor at all from mankind. He saw her truly.

He sees. He knows. He has plans for you, now and in the days ahead. He made you for good works that he prepared also for you to do and his eye is never off you. Your story is not the same as anyone else’s, but it is yours and that is enough, because it is being written by one who knows you intimately and cares about every detail, who created you and equips you for every chapter. So be strong and courageous and in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path—and say to you, “Well done,” and rejoice over you, no, even EXULT over you. This is the greater reality—greater than anything thought of in our modern philosophies.

You do exist. You are seen. You matter.