All you need is love

So just like my flailing friend, I haven't had the best of weeks.

Maybe it was the impending doom of the SATs. Maybe it was the drama inherent to the life of a modern teen. Or maybe it was all the teachers deciding to dump tests and quizzes and massively confusing lectures on photosystems all in the same week.

Whatever it was, I was so down that I didn't feel like doing anything remotely productive. I should have gone to practice, done my homework, and left today (Sunday) all free for relaxing.

But when does a rebellious teen ever do what she is supposed to?

But yesterday I got to see a friend I haven't seen in a while. We probably pissed off most of the clientele in the supermarket we frequented. We definitely had some carefree moments. But he listened to me rant. And that's the thing. Now we have AIM and email and we forget how much more satisfying it is to see the person you're talking to. And when you get a hug without having explicitly asked for one, it's the best feeling ever.

I hate to be a youtube junkie, but this is one awesome video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

But I realized that most of the pressure comes from the fact that I don't have enough love for what I do. I'm not talking about relationships or whatever. Personally I don't think teens have a right to say they love if they haven't worked hard for it.

Stress is the antithesis of love. I was having one of my crazy moments over all the work I had to get done for extracurrics and school. As I de-stressed to my senpai, he said something profound. What stresses me out is not being good enough at what I do. But he said that stress or inferiority should not be the motivator. It should be passion.

It's normal to be stressed about school. The core class system requires that you take history, English, math, and science courses for a certain number of years. But not everyone was made to be Rush Limbaugh or Alfred Nobel. And so we stress because we're studying subjects we couldn't care less about.

But extracurrics are the kicker. They are entirely optional. Or at least they're supposed to be. Nowadays colleges practically require that applicants do something outside of school. If you think about it, it'd be so nice to just go home and do homework, then vegetate in front of the tube or play video games. However, the current constraints of society demand that we be productive. Even the most laid-back people I know play a sport or an instrument. And more often than not, they do it "for college." The passion is not there.

In my case, I had a piano test last week. And I worked pretty damn hard for it, too. Not having had time to work on my pieces before, it was down to the last two weeks for me to perfect my pieces. Perfection included memorization. Now I knew I had the option to go into the testing room with my books open. But there was a certain level I wanted to hit. And that meant memorizing all four of my pieces. In hindsight, it would have been wiser to play with the book open. In my frenzy of last-minute practicing, I lost the marchy staccato touch Mendelssohn had in mind. Copland's playful "Cat and Mouse" became a string of running notes that I just had to get over with quickly before I forgot anything.

Prior to the test, I'd been watching Nodame Cantabile, a jdrama about some music students. I was trying to build my confidence (in two days, the main character managed to memorize and bring some gigantic sonatas up to competition par. Makes what I had to do pale in comparison) but I realized that I was focusing on the wrong thing. I shouldn't aim to impress people, but to prove to myself that I deserve to study music.

When you really care about what you do, you take it slow. You make sure your technique is right and that the emotions you want to convey are actually showing. And it pays off in the end.
At a recent swim meet, I lost to people I shouldn't have, people who practice in lower lanes than I do. If during practice I had paid more attention to the number of strokes I had after the flags, I might not have lost at the turn.

It sounds so basic, doesn't it? I bet most of the people who will read this are going to say, "Wow, it took her THIS long to figure that out?" It's easy to understand the principle, but the full implementation is difficult. Especially when you grow up in an Asian household.

Disclaimer: Did not mean to be racist. Post just needed a bit of levity.