Hide and seek. It’s easy to seek when the kids are too little to do a good job of hiding themselves. They create a moving lump under the bedroom comforter. This lump lets out a sneeze or giggle here and there. You could find them with your eyes closed. It’s when they’re older that seeking becomes harder and harder. It takes effort to find them at the top of the best climbing tree or hidden in the laundry hamper covered in dirty clothes. Often times “game over” is called out prematurely because you give up. How come the obvious is so easy to see? What about the not-so-obvious? So what if the seeking gets harder? The objective of the game cannot be shrugged aside because the kids cannot be forgotten. What about the millions of people struggling to get through day-to-day that are often left behind? What about the people mastering the routine of plastering their sad faces with fake masked smiles to avoid the polite, stupid, and careless “are you ok?” kinds of ignorant questions from their indifferent peers? Your eyes are not engaging to look beyond the so-called perfect exterior. So he may be the captain of the soccer team. She may be the star of the dance team. They may be a 4.0 brilliant student with a 30 or more on their ACT. They might live in a big house, with a big family, with big love. You’re only simply scraping the surface to be satisfied with the assumption that all is fair and well. Crack the shell and search for depth. Because when you dive into the deep you see the truth. The truth is that underneath his pants there are countless scratches and cuts from the night before. There are scars from months before. This morning he woke up to his pajamas plastered to his delicate skin because the blood as a result of his actions from the night before dried to his pants. He had to rip them from his skin, leaving fuzz and thread attached to his raw skin to quickly change to get through another day of hell. Another day of people judging him to have it all put together and all planned out, when really he didn’t know if he’d want to wake up the next day. There is no rhyme or reason. No explanation or specification. Often times it’s hard to find medication to keep these people motivated and dedicated in order to breathe in the dire times of near suffocation. There is no answer. Often times there’s simply no help because discretion does not exist. Open your eyes. Keeping them closed will only prove to those drowning in the darkness that you’re completely ignorant, unaware, and satisfied with the surface appearance. Open your eyes or judgment based on knowledge will only be left to posterity.