Essay for Yale

My English teacher posed the question: what makes you different?

My response: It’s hard to pinpoint a uniqueness in terms of the how’s and why’s of my achievements. Expectations, hard work, natural talent…I can’t invent “difference.” Still, I think I can say that I value creativity and imagination very much — more than most, probably. Creative works are intrinsically original, and what makes one work  stand out from another isn’t a matter of a step-by-step process or some objective scale, but a human quality of appreciation, of a perceived beauty. I pride myself on this skill that is purely human: the skill to reimagine the world or to retell it in a way that forms new spheres of perspectives. And this humanness, the ability that is common to all people but with a twist only I possess — that is where I live. That is what I value.

That is the reason this essay exists in the first place! The numbers, the lists, the endless lines of A’s and B’s can say a lot…but the essence, the soul — it is here, if anywhere. And no, of course this isn’t me, or even an actual part of me. It is only a partial representation of me, coded in words and sentences. Yet it still speaks loudly, beautifully, and truthfully.

When I write, I am putting a part of my identity onto paper. I can feel the 8.5x11 and see the smooth black ink, and I realize that it is, in fact, the only tangible “me,” the thoughts extracted from between the ears onto this flimsy processed material.

When I create music, the composer and myself, our identities are lifted into the air; the vibrations connect us, me to the audience, and the audience to the world...the harmonies translated into emotions and colors and spectacular images.

I can speak to you and shake your hand and we can laugh and cry together, but tomorrow you and I will be different people. What words, what music and expressions of ourselves do is preserve a little bit of who we are, and who we were, to put into the solidity of the world our fleeting thoughts and emotions, and to make it available to everyone. Tim O’Brien writes in The Things They Carried, “In a story…the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.”

I hope that, perhaps, my story will be able to produce some smiles, give a little piece of the world to others, and make people feel…something — something vivid, something worth waking up to. I’m not sure how or if that makes me different. But if others feel that way too, then at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that my story is different, even when the approach is the same — our respective destinations shooting out in every direction, lighting up the sky like fireworks.