When my dad brought home the singing machine–complete with microphone stand–I fell in love. In love with singing, in love with Yaz (the group my sisters and I sang to most with on our new fangled machine) and in love with the idea of someday singing on a big stage.
Until–as a freshman–I didn’t make it into the top choir at my school. And tough I did make it into the second highest choir, with several opportunities to sing solos, I believed myself not good enough, thus ending my singing career–and singing all together.
Sadly, I had not yet learned the ways of successful people. Successful people like Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun of the band Twenty One Pilots.
The Twenty One Pilots video for their song “Ode to Sleep” inspired me as I watched them persevere with patience, playing for a group of 12 people then 300, then on to a crowd of 12,000.
Watching this video I thought, that’s the key. The key to success. And why I never achieved it in areas like piano lessons, choir and writing (and by success–I’m not looking for grandeur–I’m talking about just doing something, anything at all).
I never learned the lessons of pursuing talents with patience, of doing things simply for the love of it and of pleasing myself first–free from worry about the opinions of others.
I never learned to say the words spoken by Tyler Joseph when, in answer to the critics who told him, “You can’t be all things to everyone.”
He said, “I’m not trying to be! I’m being what I want to be for myself.”
But, although I may not have learned these things before, I’m learning them now. And I can honestly say that I’m loving the process of allowing myself to be a beginner. A beginner in pursuit of being what I want to be for myself.
