Venue: Mayapada Building 17th Floor , Jakarta Motivators Club
Word by word:
My name is Ariel. I am delivering my first speech today, the icebreaker, the title: A moment in my life.
Today I want to share with you a moment in my life that makes me who I am today.
This moment in my life is when I fell into a real deep failure and I manage to rise from this fall.
Before the age of twelve, I was already tired of living
In fact, I ran away from home to live with my grandma, repeatedly that mom and my dad quarrel because of this little daughter who doesn’t want to be born a girl.
My mom made me attended piano, ballet, violin, mandarin, drawing and I have a tutor who visited me like a living ghost every night including Sundays to make me do my school homework. When I argued why alex (my brother) and albert (my younger brother) doesn’t have to do all these, why I am the only kid being tortured here.
My mom would say
Because you are a girl !
Because you are a girl !
Because you are a girl !
I hear this a thousand times, that I just begin to wonder of the possibilities of faking myself into a boy like Mulan. One day I came home and my brother wasn’t around. I looked all over the house and waited till bedtime for my brother to show up. He did not. The next day I discovered he has left the country. I escaped from home the following day after school and wrote a horrifying letter to my mom.
My mom sent me to singapore the following DAY. It turns out that my mom did make a plan for me afterall.
Leaving the country was a new found happiness for me. I thought I can now be free from all the crazy piano teachers and my challenging mom. However when i arrived in Singapore, there was a whole new challenge waiting for me. I got admitted into a girl school that was ranked 8 in singapore. My grades were extremely poor that hardly anyone wants to be my friend. Not only that i have no friends, I have Miss Vimala Kumar as my english teacher. The teacher most noted for her strict and fierce teaching skills in the entire school
At that point in my life, I almost wanted to kill myself. I did not feel like going to school and I did not feel like going home to Indonesia. For one moment, I thought I HAVE NOWHERE TO GO. I STARTED DAY DREAMING in class. One afternoon, I stared blankly at the band members marching across the school field. It was like a calling inside me that I should join the band.
And I did. I joined the band. Joining the band turns out to be the savior of my life. It lifted my entire spirit and mind. I learned that success require perseverance and positive attitude towards everything. Curiosity can bring us to a place further. Curiosity makes me found seven new best friends in the band. Soon I came to realize that I wasn’t the only one struggling in this world. They also have a challenging mom and every daughter and son is treated differently, They also have red color grades to work hard on. During that year, our school band was selected from a pool of 150 schools to participate in the SYF Band Competition. After six months of practice under the hot sun, 110 band members together we wont the 1st position in the 1996 SYF Band Competition. Winning the competition lifted my confidence about myself and how much I can achieve by working extra harder. I started achieving good grades in school and graduated from O LEVEL with 6 As. Following O LEVEL, I also did very well in college and graduated at 22, the youngest from MBA Class in America. On my last day at Cedar, Miss Vimala Kumar gave me a novel call “Anne of Green Gables”
In the novel, she wrote this:
God makes everyone of us unique and different. You may think that your life is the worst in this world. You may think no one in this world live such a horrible life as yours. But don’t be sad. Because God makes everyone of us unique for a reason. Soon when you grow up you will learn to love yourself.
Today when I look back at this book, I finally understand why Miss Kumar gave me this book. It was because, I was just like Anne, the main character in this novel. An orphan girl who refused to follow the rules and uniquely different from everyone yet she finally manage to find happiness.
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