Welcome to the Academy

Gentlemen, welcome to the Academy. The Institute. The finest school that turns out the finest young men. You are no longer a child. You are a future Son of Xavier.

It was arcane, an antique, something that somehow survived the tortures of time. A stoic, unwavering monolith that stood proud and unchanged. If you did not understand it, you were not a part of it. To understand it was to life it, to live it was to learn it, to learn it was to understand it. A neverending cycle, looping for an eternity.

We did our best to understand, clinging to eachother for dear life. It swallowed us whole, one by one. Ground us up, injected what was left with honor and committment and service and courage and a sense of duty, a command of language, the knowledge of right and wrong and when which one was needed. And then it built us back from the ground up. That’s what it did. That’s what it was made to do. Swallow frightened children, and spit them out as soldiers, be it in the literal or figurative sense.

We were good little slates, filling up with all the necessary information, learning the rhetoric, memorizing the steps, our roles to fill. And that’s how it was. Fill the glass with the juice of knowledge, and drink it down. Be all you can be, what they want you to be. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, For the greater Glory of God. Written on our papers, etched on our minds. Property of the church and the school and the tradition. Shirt and tie and patch adorned blazer.

I was a part of the cadre, as I was meant to be. I became what I had to be. I did what I had to do. And it stayed with me. To this day, it’s with me. It made me who I am. A Jesuit run, JROTC involved all-boy school. was no place for feelings. So I wrote. I wrote, and here I am today, writing. I survived, just as it survived. A relic. I am not of this time. I am a product of the past in the present. I am a soldier in the battle of life. I am a Son of Xavier. I am part of the cadre. I am one of the many men who have walked down those halls.

I am.

~ by Just Another Writer on Saturday, April 11, 2009.