Flattened

Around this time thirty years ago, I became acquainted with the Morehead Scholarship, an elite program affiliated with the University of North Carolina. Among many other perks, it bestows upon recipients a free education, hip summer internships and a certain cachet. For reasons that remain unclear to me, I resolved as a fourteen year old to vie for the scholarship - quite casually establishing an ambitious goal which I then toiled vigorously over the following four years to attain.

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My quest for the Morehead exacted notable sacrifice, including late nights of earnest study and weekends of leading extracurricular endeavors. It also sired impressive achievements, including the presidency of the Honor Council and editorship of the school paper. Along the way, I was “tapped” into Totomoi, the school’s fraternity of high achievers, and received the prestigious “Most Honorable Student” award - all the while growing more convinced the Morehead was mine for the taking.
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When I learned otherwise - that the scholarship would in effect be taken from me - I was not just deflated but utterly crushed. My mother knew I would be flattened, as perhaps only a mother could, and instead of calling me with the good tidings as planned, delivered the painful news in person. I still recall beating my clenched fists on the dashboard of her Honda Accord - a wholly unusual outpouring of anger, accompanied by an equally uncharacteristic display of tears.
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If you’re rolling your eyes now in a “cry me a river” kind of way, I hear you, for in that forlorn pantheon of loss and defeat, my own would scarcely register on a Richter scale of set-backs. Losing an opportunity is hardly akin to losing a loved one or a livelihood, nor one’s home or health. That said, my experience of loss in that moment was profound, for I felt broken in a way I had never felt before or have since.
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As such, I consider the loss a shape-shifting event, influencing how I navigate troubled and tranquil waters alike. I wonder for instance if this set-back fostered a risk-averse orientation, whereby I would henceforth swing for base hits rather than the bleachers. Though some would say Evins Mill is a home run, it was a hedged bet nonetheless, for my father was behind me, as was my naive ignorance of the risk.
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I also suspect the set-back trained a sarcastic voice, which occasionally rears its wry head in these essays and routinely provides succor in difficult situations. It may have also spawned a self-deprecating willingness to take myself as seriously as I should, which is to say, hopefully not very. A spirit of skepticism also made its debut appearance in wake of the debacle, for when faith in one’s manifest destiny is shaken, the curious tend to question other basic assumptions about life and how to live it.
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Speaking of assumptions, perhaps another outgrowth of the Morehead mishap is that I no longer presume a glass is half full or half empty - only that it bears both in equal degrees. And if Pollyanna bears high hopes while the world weary are resigned to low ones, as a self-described realist, I would jettison expectations altogether and simply strive for the desired outcome, knowing that the striving is its own due - and that the "best laid plans of mice and men go often askew."