The other day I was watching the video of Susan Boyle on Britian's Got Talent, I watch this often and it always makes me think deeply as I watch it. I begin to pick it apart and analyze it as I do with most situations in life. The beginning of the video makes me realize how we all, no matter where we are from, judge a book by it's cover. If you watch this video on You Tube within a matter of seconds you can see what I mean, it makes me sick/sad every time I watch. Next, as the judges ask her questions they are all rolling their eyes and making faces that honestly should have made her leave the stage. As the music starts it gets a little quiet and all the sudden a beautiful voice comes out of Susan's mouth. You can see the faces of, not only the audience, but the judges light up. I think Simon can only see dollar signs where I think others are truly touched by Susan's beautiful voice. When I watch the video I become outraged at the actions of everyone and how they could treat someone with such disrespect before giving her a change. By the end of the video everyone loves Susan and she is a success. Yay we love you, you are amazing, on and on. It seems to me she was all of these things before she stepped onto the stage, wasn't she? I have to tell myself that this had to be staged. I hope the judges and the audience were told she was amazing and that they wanted them all to act like she is going to be a big disappointment just so everyone could turn on a dime. It has to be the show set up, right? The scheme to get ratings. I hope anyways because stuff like that turns me off within seconds. My brain has to try to make sense of it in order to believe this world isn't really that cruel.
What does this story have to do with regrets? I wonder to myself about how many times Susan thought to herself, 'I am not good enough?' Or 'I can't sing well enough to use it to make the world a better place.' I have to believe she did say this many times as she states she is 47 years old. There had to be many times in her life that her love and joy of singing had to make her think she could make it. I wonder how many regrets she has that she never used that talent and shared it with more people earlier in her life. It seems to me unless we are encouraged by someone early in life to pursue one of or more of our passions we let them slip out of our hands and think to ourselves, 'I can never do that.' Later in life we think we are getting too old. Our life circumstances, finances, or other obstacles might hold us back. The voices in our head that we may have heard telling us, you can't do that, may haunt us so we just never do what we love. How sad this is.
I can remember as a younger child when I still went to Grand Rapids Public schools we had art class. I had a huge love and passion for art class. We had art once a week, it is all I thought about, art. I didn't care to learn anything else all I had in my head all week was that art class. When we walked down to art class I remember how excited I would get. I would enter the room and my heart would race. It was overwhelming for me. I would stand there and look around at all the station I wanted to go to. I would have to decide which station I would go to and it was like a kid in a candy store. You have to understand, it was only a half hour and it flew by. I remember I never wanted to leave that room. I loved the paints, the different color chalk, the easels, which at that time looked huge to me, the paper on the easel that you could rip off and start a new picture would make me dream of someday owning one of those. I basically loved everything about that room. If I could have, I would have loved to take art everyday, all day, and forgot about the other crap. You must understand back then art wasn't as big of a deal as it is now days and within time art classes were eliminated because of budget cuts. When we moved to Jenison there were no art classes so you can imagine how disappointed I was, very. I think that is where I left my passion for art, sitting at a desk in 4th grade at Bauerwood Elementary School. Sad! I was never encouraged, like Susan, to chase a dream, it just stopped. When you are in 4th grade you have no idea what a dream is for the future because you are living in the here and now, the future is a million miles away. My talent and passion died, to some degree. I remember how excited I would get when my own children would bring home a art project. they thought I was crazy, I thought I died and went to heaven. I kept it all. In fact right now I am looking at a head and a bowl Richie made me out of clay and I LOVE IT! I don't think they even knew why I would get so excited about their art projects.
It is somewhat ironic that years later I would become a hairdresser, a form of art. Truthfully my dream was really to become a nurse so I could help people, but that just wasn't in the cards for me. I was a hands on person, all the tests, paper writing, and memorizing for me would have been too much. I was not academically smart so I decided to use my art in a beauty salon. Now mind you, when you think of a hairdresser you think of getting your haircut or colored and that is isn't that big of a deal. Well, it is, being a hairdresser is a very hard job, not only physically but mentally. We had to learn a lot of stuff in beauty school. Chemicals, diseases, etc. I truthfully have no idea how I ever passed those tests but the only think I can think of is because both the instructors liked me and saw what I could do with a head of hair. In fact, one of the teachers would only let me cut her hair, so that encouraged me to do my best. Nurse? No. I can tell you this, being a hairdresser is way more than just doing hair. You become a therapist, listener, encourager, receptionist, and friend. People trust you and you form very close bonds with one another as you share your lives. I worked in a salon where all the clients came in week after week so we really became close. We shared so much and I will never forget my clients.
Today I read a quote and it said, "If you can imagine it, you can create it. If you dream it, you can become it." As I read this it made me think about becoming what I always dreamed of, an artist. I didn't. Do I regret it? In some ways yes, but in other ways when I think about it I did become an artist of a different kind. A people artist. I cherish my 20 years of being able to love people, of making people feel good when they left me. I am sure many of them do not even know how good they made me feel to as they would leave. I hope, just as Susan did, that you and I, if we have any long lost dreams we do not give up on them just because of our age. Just as the quote says, we really can imagine, create, and become our dream we just have to try. I have taken up my love of art over the past few years, it isn't great art, but it is my art. It is my heart, my soul, and it is my therapy. It takes me back to a time of innosense. It comforts me when I am down and out. I hope that if you have a long lost love of something you are able to do it and when you tell yourself you can't, think of Susan and be inspired to know you can!
God Bless!
Dianne
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