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