Let Nothing Stop You

What2Say2Day? On Friday I was privileged to witness the fruition of a project taken on by one of the youth I work with at school. Let me state right from the beginning this young man has what we political-correctly call special abilities. At the beginning of the year he firmly stated that his year-end project would be conducting the high school band as they play an arrangement of his making. (For those not familiar with the year-end projects many Hawaii high schools do it involves a research paper, a final product of some kind that relates to the research, and a presentation of the project to a board of educators.)

His adult mentors called it lofty, and were upfront with him in saying there would be many obstacles along the way, but if this is what he wanted they would fully support him as much as it was in their power to do so. And obstacles there were. Firstly we had to pick a research question. When asked why he wanted to do this project and what community impact would be made by it he firmly stated that he understood music has emotional effects on people, and he wanted his music to have the same.

Next on the list of obstacles was finding a mentor who could work with his abilities and knew music enough to guide him through making an arrangement. This proved difficult as those who were willing to work with his abilities didn't know enough about music and those who knew music couldn't work with his abilities. Nevertheless every avenue was exhausted until a mentor was found.

Then came the endless days of research, arranging, writing his paper, arranging, making sure he didn't fall behind in his other classes (which, by the way, include physics and trigonometry) and arranging. Then, this past Friday, despite all obstacles both physical and emotional, he stood before the band as all eyes focused on him, some in admiration, and conducted a musical piece of his own arrangement.

If his end goal was to bring awareness that music causes emotion in people then I have to say he passed with an A+. Congratulations, young man, for never quitting on yourself and for allowing others to guide you along the way.