Thursday, April 23, 2009

The Power of Dancing - Matt Harding

By watching this video, I learnt a useful lesson. I learned the importance of Dances. Luckily, Matt Harding had the privilege to travel around the world and express his feelings through his dances. I believe 'Dancing' is a powerful tool to communicate with other people, despite the difference in the language we speak. It also creates bonds that link our feelings to each other by sharing our ideas globally, by dancing. Dancing is a language that can be understood by everyone throughout the world. It has its own charm by making people smile, laugh and be connected to others. 

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Wishes, Hopes and Dreams


After watching this video, I was deeply inspired. 2 different things amazed me. Firstly, it was shocking to see how people judged Susan based on everything unimportant before she even performed. People laughed at her just because she was different. She was different in terms of age, size and appearance than all the other contestants before. Honestly, I was never different than those. Before she even performed, I was wondering why an old woman was standing there, confident of the fact that she would fail. Everybody was biased against her and was certain that she would not make it, but the outcome was absolutely ironic and amazing. Everyone stood up at the end of her performance clapping out loud as the music stopped, shocked by her gifted voice.

Watching this video made me rethink about my daily life and like others, I was found guilty of judging people. Unfortunately, this bad habit has adapted to our daily lifestyle and it always influences our thinking. Another fact that I found amazing was Susan’s capability to spark a miracle. This reminded me of a quote said by Jean De La BruyereOut of difficulties grow miracles..’ I believe that you can achieve nothing without effort. It required bravery for Susan to stand on the stage fighting herself, and all the negative comments out there. Now, this has proven to me that everybody has the potential to do something absolutely amazing that we are not even aware of. Like Susan said “I dream to be a professional singer…..I never got the chance to perform, but here’s hopefully going to change.” First, I accused this as being just an excuse of appearing on the show not talented. Now, I believe that she is absolutely right and I am sure that there are thousands of those in the world with amazing gifts like Susan and Paul that the world is not aware of. We should abandon our thoughts on everything else but our honest opinion on the performer’s talent itself.

I find it often surprising that it is the ‘irony’ that amazes people. Not exceptional talent on an aspect but the fact that it was the different from what we expected. We judge people based on all those irrelevant things, such as appearance, skin color, background, size and so on. Both of these videos claim to have over 40 million views. The reason behind this is because both of these heroes inspire the hopeless in the world by proving, encouraging them to never give up their dream, despite the negative comments of people. There is a clear connection of the poems written by Langston Hughes and the videos of the heroes above. They both inspire people and make the readers/viewers reconsider their definition of hope while emphasizing the importance of hope. The poem ‘Dream’ clearly states the importance of hope by comparing Life to a Broken-winged bird without hope. Susan and Paul proved to the world that appearance and size are just an outer skin. But pure talent comes from the inside. They are my inspiration.

I chose an image of Winston Churchill because the bravery of Susan Boyle reminded me of a quote once said by Winston Churchill. 'The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.' Susan endured the difficulty and in the end, she was approved of a talent that was left in the dark before.

I am the Ocean


I am the Ocean

I am the Ocean,
Fierce yet calm,
Trailing behind the unwanted,
Devouring hungrily upon those boats,
As wavelets of my white horses gallop,
Leaving nothing behind but pieces of flotsam,
Swaying to my current.
At night, the moon seeks me,
The reason why I rise and fall.
Glassy as ever,
I grip my claws in the depth of sand,
And I pull.
In the morning, I return.
Mirror calm,
Listening to the melodies of the seagulls,
Waiting for sunrise.
*The reason why I picked the image above to describe my poem is because it is the image similar to the image I had in my mind while writing this poem. I could imagine wavelets crashing against each other racing to spread themselves across the sandy beach.

Cricket Diane, 'Joyous Song of the Sea'
Image source