Discouraging incidents shed lights on our internal struggle. I was inspired to write this poem after facing a second rejection to a summer program. I was not ready to accept the blatant truth. I feared I was not enough. In the midst of my emotional struggle, I poured my feelings on paper. I gradually calmed myself in the process of creating this poem. I realized the different implications of the application result. Obstructions in one path alludes the possibility of another. After a few days, I was inspired with an idea to start a personal project that fuses all my interest and visions for our community. I now came to make peace with the initial rejection. When I shared my poem with a friend, who happened to be struggling with a course in school, she told me that many lines of the poem resonated with her as well. Looking back to the draft, I realized its implication can be applied to a broad range of experiences that are unique to the youth of the 21st century: fear of failure and not being enough, disappointment from rejection of the people around us; trying to understand who we really are, and learning the importance of recovery after each failure… These are constant themes that compose the life of a teenager. They are themes imposed by the system we now live in, a system in which many youths are expected to live up to a predetermined standard, whether it is getting A’s in school, going to the “right” college and choosing the “right” major or knowing the trends in social media. Only when we acknowledge our current situation and understand that we are not alone in this process to self discovery, can we truly embrace a brighter future that is defined by ourselves.
