The black the white and the grey

hello

firstly i would like to ask you a

question do you recognize these letters

well to those of you who are artists

designers

or editors these colors or these

letters sorry may seem very familiar to

you

as they are the color codes of the two

color

black and white you may ask why am i

presenting these colors today

well you can see the title of my speech

no i’m not here to just talking about

the black and white

i’m here to talk about something

yourself

a small note before i proceed i am not

referring this

to any racist or racist discrimination

so please do not misunderstand me

before i talk about yourself let me talk

about myself first

so i’ve been living in black and white

for my 17 years of existence

i see them everywhere in the books i

read

on the piano i play on the sheet music

everywhere even my clothes

the majority of them are black and white

clothes

and i’m also wearing a white shirt today

these two colors used to shape

how i look at the world

i either see things as white right

or black wrong

let me show her to you so my story dates

back to my seventh grade advent school

and the school was giving out

scholarships to outstanding students

and i signed up for the scheme

the assignment for the first round was

simply writing your profile

and complete your entrance form i did

not think much about what i should

include in my biography

thus i was just listing down all the

academic achievements

and extracurricular activities that i

had that i could remember

i’ve done it very quickly but when

i asked my parents to consult me on the

profile

i actually got scolded by my father for

not putting enough effort in my profile

and he told me to write it in the form

of an essay

i however was surprised i did not share

the same opinion to my father at all

i was actually quite confident of what

i’ve done

and that was me looking at my problem

only on one side i was right

i was the white and i was so sure about

the fact that

every other contestant would do the same

thing that i did

so why should i write a whole essay just

for the first round well i can do it

much

much simpler and faster

my dad he was being unnecessarily strict

on me

and what i thought of him was he was

wrong

he was black and

therefore i should not listen to him

well yet arguing with him only made the

situation worse

i ended up writing my profile in tears

and disobedience

fortunately i got accepted to the second

round

and eventually i felt

grateful that i had written an essay

because maybe it was the essay that

earned my ticket

to the second round and then at that

moment

i realized i had only been thinking

about

what i want to do not what others

were expecting of me i knew

it’s time to break out from my own

cocoon

in my story i was right to think that

there’ll be

nobody who would do such thing like

writing an essay just for the first

round

but i was wrong to think that listing

things down would be enough

because i’ll be judged based on my

performance for three rounds

and what would be the point for the

judges to accept someone like me

who does not dare to stand out let alone

the crowd

but even from her own self

the world cannot be only black or only

white

look at this yin and yang symbol what do

we see

we see a combination of black and white

we see a combination

of two separate yet attached colors

because we must have both the yin and

yang elements in our body

to balance and so i thought

what if i can mix the black and the

white together

what if i can balance them

from the beginning of the speech i’m

sure that there’ll be someone who will

ask me

where is the grey now you have it

because you can actually have black and

white mixed together

to create the gray you know when

at that moment when vinsko accepted me

to further into the second round

i knew it’s time the grey appeared

the very first idea of the gray the

different me who thinks two sides of the

problem

started to come to my mind

and i knew it’s time for me to stand out

for myself

it’s time for me to think not out of the

box

but out of my box first

it’s dear audience

what is your white maybe the black to

the others

therefore we need to balance the black

and the white in our world

to create the gray it’s also funny you

know

we have the gray matters and we are

intelligence because because we have

them

so why think black or think white

when you can actually think gray

now you’ve seen the power of the gray

but i have a friend who asked me what

about

following your instinct because your

thing is a very interesting thing

they say trust your instinct they are

messages from your soul

well i don’t deny the fact that your

instinct can be very helpful sometimes

but

you cannot just follow it blindly

now i’d like to tell you a story

about how your instinct can hurt others

so i have one thing that i’ve always

felt regret for

and until now i still wish

maybe just maybe

if i had stopped to think differently

from what i normally think

the result would have been positive

please raise your hands if you have ones

in your lives fought with your parents

okay interesting well i can see a lot of

you

so back to my story it was a very tiring

afternoon

i came home and i felt exhausted

all i wanted to do was to lay down and

have some sleep

my father on the other on the other hand

he was really cheerful

and happy to welcome me home as

it was rare for him to be able to come

home soon

and have dinner with us we hugged

we laughed and we had a conversation

but i did not welcome him at all

i wanted him to leave me alone i want

him to go away

and i need him to understand that i

don’t need him there

we were talking about something i cannot

remember exactly

but i cannot forget when he was joking

about a boy whom i don’t like in the

class

and he asked me to tell him about that

boy

and i yelled why should i tell you

after i flushed those words out

i was dumbfounded i found myself yelling

at my dad for the first time

in my life and i was

expecting for a rage

nothing happened silence

it was all silence

until i took all my courage to look into

my dad’s eyes

and i saw sparkling tears

never have i ever been seen

my dad trembling like that because he

has been someone so caring and so strong

to his family

that when he shed his tears

i was shocked

and the last thing i could remember was

him

walking away after telling me

get some sleep rest well

even until now whenever i look at him i

cannot

forget how hurt he was that day

i was being selfish the only thing that

going on my mind then was

me being uncomfortable

i was listening to my white instinct

telling me non-stop that i am the only

thing that i should be concerned about

not my dad or anyone else

i was being too white that i did not

care for the black my dad’s emotions

i was being too white that i threw

carefree and irresponsible words toward

the one who truly loved me and i was

being too white

that i hit my father heart and his heart

if only i hadn’t been too white if only

i had been thinking of the black

if only i had stopped to change my

attitude

my father the greatest teacher of my

life i must say

once told me that you are a person who

has a very strong personality

you are very strong on your own but you

are also very weak

back at the time when he said that to me

i did not understand his words at all

they seemed so conflicting conflicting

and confusing right

but now i do i am strong

because i can stand unchanged i’m weak

because i only stand unchanged

thank you