Susan Boyle's Great Reminder

I still have Susan Boyle's performance of "I Dreamed" from Les Miserables saved in my Inspiration folder (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY). Her performance reminded me of what creating is really about, and why I love the process.

There is something particularly thrilling in her rendition, despite some technical flaws.  The sense of authenticity in that first performance -- how could it have been anything else?  She was living her dream.  She'd fought for the chance to sing in front of a huge audience all her adult life, and now she had the chance.  But I think the authenticity was about more than that.  Susan Boyle sang as the "I don’t care” girl.

I don’t care what you think of me.
I don’t care that I’m not supposed to have a bloody chance in hell.
I don’t care.

The freedom, the exhilaration -- that is what we feel, why it brings tears when she pulls it off. Why girls in the audience threw their arms in the air, laughing, why Piers threw back his head and laughed -- at himself, it seemed, at our presumptions and prejudices and automatic desire to limit ourselves and others so we can excuse our own self-imposed limits. Isn’t that really why these shows are so phenomenally successful -- and soften so incredibly cruel? At least I’m not THAT, we can smirk. At least I’m not that plain, that talentless, I didn’t muff that note, cry in front of millions. I didn’t try, either, but -- certainly better not to try than to be humiliated, right? And leave feeling superior and oh so comfortable with our familiar limitations. He/she couldn’t do it, so I don’t have to worry that I never tried; it’s clear it can’t be done by most of us.

But one of the questions Susan’s success raises is, is it true that most of us can’t? Or just that most of us don’t try, don’t commit? After all, she had no silver spoon in life. She has a gift, true, but she could have ignored it. She could have blamed the fates for giving her less than the whole package, and decided she had no right to believe in her gift....

It’s so much easier to be distracted by the instant gratification of television and food, by worries and old sorrows -- by anything, anything, but what we want most. Why is it so very hard? To commit to what we most want requires commitment, a conscious consciousness, consciousness of the fact that it’s worth it; conscious winnowing out of what is less important, conscious rejection of endless distraction. How do you know if you have enough talent? Did Susan know? Did she achieve it because she had it to begin with, or because she worked so hard and refused not to believe?

I wonder how society would be different if humans were raised to believe that going beyond limits is natural and that settling for minutia, for limitation, is unnatural. What if we were all taught from childhood that soaring beyond limits is what we’re all meant to do with our lives? We'd have a different world, I think, and a different trajectory for humanity....

But in the meantime, we have to do it in spite of an indifferent or hostile culture that would just as soon the great mass of people failed. We have to do it for ourselves, learn to say, "I don’t care if you don’t believe in me or my dream -- I do, and I will."

Susan's voice is a reminder. That’s why the thrill -- that reminder of what is meant to be and can be for all of us. And we throw back our heads and laugh to remember it, like Saint-Exupery’s little prince.