By Dan Cho
Copy Editor

Isolation and loneliness. This alone can drive the mind of any human being manic. Through these conditions, enabled through their environment, their physical and mental health deteriorates over time from the consequences of bullying, addiction, and self-harm. So why was one of the only effective methods that joined unlikely students in creating genuine connections with others taken away?

Challenge Day; the only day where students, teachers, and staff are able to see each other eye-to-eye. On this day of reckoning, everyone exposes their vices and virtues without fear of embarrassment or exclusion – their hidden and pent-up emotions are free for all to see. The image a person walls up as a shell crumbles and the person, from the perspective of others, seemingly transforms into a completely different person, except that person was there all along.

“It is one thing to know a person’s title, accomplishments, successes or ‘image.’ It is entirely different to connect to their humanity, to learn the intimate details about them that you would know if you really knew them,” Yvonne and Rich Dutra-St.John wrote in “Be The Hero You’ve Been Waiting For,” “Many people are so afraid of getting vulnerable or, as we say at Challenge Day, ‘getting real,’ that they end up settling for superficial relationships and conversations rather than risking the possibility of sharing more personally, and then perhaps being rejected. People often compare their ‘insides’ to other people’s ‘outsides,’ and relate image-to-image rather than heart-to-heart.”

Despite the clear effects that seem to benefit the participants and their community, the event was cancelled two years ago. Though this celebration of the human struggle was torn down, its impacts still lands a mark on past participants. “Honestly, the experience that I got from it in middle school helped open my eyes,” junior Ryleigh Arlen said. “The people I saw in the hallways that looked like they were living perfect lives made me realize that they had put up a front, like all of us, to cover up. The only difference was that they were better at hiding it.”

The beauty of the human struggle is not the finish line that marks the end of the strenuous and overwhelming journey, nor is it reaching the peak of the mountain top of an impossible challenge that makes everything worth the pain. It is instead the blood shed, sweat spilled, and tears shared that makes the rugged path more satisfying together than seizing the glittering prize at the end of the voyage alone. The strings that attach people emotionally in the violence of life are what make them human.