I Can

I watched a talk on TED today. It was by a young woman named Sarah Kay. She is a spoken word poet. You'd think that isn't a real thing, right? And even if it is, what's the scope of it? Who'd be stupid enough to think they can make a career out of it? But she has. Along with a fellow spoken word poet, Phil Kaye, she has founded Project V.O.I.C.E. (Vocal outreach into creative expression), something that celebrates and inspires self-expression. It's meant to bind together learning and understanding the unknown, writing and growing as a person.

She came up with this concept in 2004. She was just 16 years old. In her speech at TED, she said that the first step to anything, is to believe that you can do it. Because, and this is coming from me, if you start off something believing that you won't be good at it, or will never like it, you'll never be phenomenal at it. It's like me and math. Kind of a love-hate relationship really. I've always been terrible at it. And I'm unwilling to try. My mom and my sister are convinced that if I had liked math, I'd never have needed extra help and I'd have been just as good as they were. I remember the moment my teacher introduced integration to us. My jaw dropped open. I said to myself, "I can't do this!". I was terrified of it. Frankly, I think I'm still scared. And the mistake I made then was that I started to believe and it wasn't my cup of tea. Because the year-long struggle I had after that was absolutely exhausting. More for my mom than me. I tend to get mulish, when I'm afraid and underconfident.

Fear is a part of being human. Only a fool is not afraid of anything. But fear can be damaging. It can be detrimental to one's development. Fear of not being good enough, fear of being unpopular due to a particular opinion, fear of not being accepted. Fear is good. But it's something we need to overcome. We'll always be afraid of something. I'm afraid of speaking on stage. My heart pounds, I start trembling and I begin to stammer. I forget everything that I had planned to say. But I can't always shy away from speaking, can I? And the only way to do it, is to keep trying. I was once afraid of my sister hissing "Voldemort" at night as I tried to sleep. I got over it. Fear is natural. It's human. And, it lingers. It never really goes away. All of us learn to brave it. And it all starts with saying,"I can."