Hey Internetians, It's 10:30 on a Tuesday morning, about 20 minutes out from my first (and last :D) class of the day. You know you wouldn't think that in that time span of the morning you would learn a life lesson, but somehow, it happened to me. I thought to myself, as most people would, "Ugh, its too early for this sh*t." hahaha. However these things don't really run by your schedule, and things happen in the most unexpeted places. By this point I've just learned to roll with it, haha. Let me elaborate a bit...
This morning I went to class totally terrified about doing my ten minute presentation. It was for a songwriting seminar and it was about the authenticity of music, and how special the art songwriting is in pop culture. I had to do it over the span of a weekend because I was away in Paris, France, (I'll come back to that too, its important) all spring break so I didn't have a chance to complete it. I was nervous for that reason for the fact that in this class a topic like that is going to be contraversial.
Least to say it was contraversial. The first two projects went off wonderfully, and no one in the class had anything to say about them. However when I did mine, everyone in the class spoke out for it, against and it clearly voiced their opinions. I turned into a little bit of a debate within the class about what defines a songwriter. It made some people mad, some people agreed, and some people just didn't care. Reguardless I was just taken back by it all and was nervous that I failed and made the entire class upset, including the professors.
On my trip to Paris, France my roommate and I got into an disagreement over a misunderstanding. I tried to make peace with her, and get her to understand what I was saying but it really didn't work the way I thought it would. Within our arguing too she pointed out somethings about my opinion that I could have expressed to her better and I took that to heart, because she was right. However I wasn't going to drop my opinion or how I felt because of it. In the end we dropped the argument and I left the country feeling awkward, upset, and confused. I was peaceful, and amicable, but she still didn't work with me to make peace, and I didn't understand why.
Today during that presentation, those things came together, and I remembered what one of my professors had told me. That not everyone is going to like your work or agree with you in certain aspects but as long as you enjoy it that's what really matters. Then I thought about how broad the guidelines for this presentation were and how much of an opinion based class this was and I realized it didn't matter. My topic had created buzz, but it's my opinion. Who am I if I don't have my opinions and stick to them? Even though opinions can change and people can change if I am swayed by some tiny disagreement I loose my sense of self, which is important in knowing oneself.
The point being that, you can't please everyone. If you change your opinions and beliefs based on the opinions of others then you loose yourself. That's what I need to work on. I was so focused on whether people were going to like this presentation or not I overstepped the fact that it created this debate that the other projects hadn't. Good or bad, it was cool to see other students speaking out and letting their opinions on the subject heard. That to me, meant that my project has succeeded in one aspect.
For the longest time I was too passive. You know, going around trying to please and serve everyone and everything. Doing what I could to survive, and be amicable with everyone, have everyone like me. However, I had lost myself in the process and as I am getting older I am starting to find myself again, thats conflicting with my ability to be able to be friends with everyone. Realizing this, I know now that I have to find a balance between making my opinions known to people, and standing by them, and then being passive enough to still work with people and their opinions and their beliefs. Like everything in life, its a balance. I haven't exactly figured out quite what that balance is yet, but armed with my new tools I hope I'll be able to figure it out.
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