Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (things happen for a reason)
Hacky Sack should be made an Olympic Sport.
But I do digress from what I was going to talk about in this entry...
When I was 13 years old I was a professional singer and dancer on the stage.
Come back in time with me...
I was in year 8 and I was at school standing on the side of the sport field one afternoon waiting for the school day to end. I was bored and I was being a recluse as I quietly sang a song to myself to keep sane. It was a Michael Jackson song, "Who Is It?" I think. I thought no one could hear me but I was wrong as a guy in my year approached me telling me that I could sing. I was flattered but I dismissed what he said thinking that everyone could sing. If you can talk then you can sing, I thought. But apparently not.
Ten minutes later as the bell was about to ring and I was walking back to the school quadrangle getting ready to go home and suddenly a group of people crowded around me demanding that I sing. Within ten minutes, the guy from the sport field who heard me sing had told people that I could sing and now they wanted a demonstration. So with apprehension, I sang, and they cheered and smiled, and I smiled too. These people, most of whom I certainly wasn't friends with by any means, now appreciated something in me. I'd found something that I could do and people liked it. It was very flattering.
Now as it so happened at this time, Andrew Lloyd Webber's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was in Sydney. A part of the performers in the musical is a group of children that were cast from schools in Sydney. My school was planning to audition a group of children for the musical.
Word got around the school that Mark could sing and over the next few weeks I found myself being asked to sing in classrooms. At first I was terrified and I'd sing every time with my face and eyes fixated on the carpet floor never looking at anyone. But my confidence built up overtime until it came to a point where it was a joy to be singing on stage. It was another world where I could leave behind any real world anxieties and where people at the time of all walks, from friends to bullies, showed respect and appreciation. It certainly didn't hurt my self-esteem :p (other parts of my school experience probably did, but that's another story)
Anyway, I was asked to join the school's entry into the musical.
So we got into the musical, and it was an amazing experience that I'll never forget. I was thinking about what happens in this musical last night and today. If Joseph's brothers had never betrayed him and had never sold him into slavery where he went to Egypt to be made the Pharaoh’s vizier, then Joseph's family would have starved to death in Canaan when the seven year famine later came to Canaan, but Joseph happened to be in the right place at the right time, even because of something that would have seemed not good to him at the time (being betrayed and sold as a slave by your brothers). It's an extraordinary series of coincidences and good luck on Joseph's part, but as Obi-Wan Kenobi said in Star Wars, "in my experience, there's no such thing as luck". And the mathematics don't add up to dismiss it to just "luck". I think it's the same in our lives. When I look back on my life, I was very "lucky" to get the role in this musical, but I could have easily not have got it. The boy in the sport field might not have heard me, he might not have told his friends, I might not have been able to sing in the first place! So when I think of the things that are good in my life right now, I feel blessed because it could very easily not be how it is. And when I think of things in my life right now that I don't like so much, I just have to remember that I don't know the future and I don't know what's around the corner, just as Joseph didn't know what was in store for him in the long term when his brothers sold him into slavery. Things happen for a reason and the future is not all random.
"Children of Israel are never alone. For we know we shall find our own piece of mind. For we have been promised, a land of our own!"
But I do digress from what I was going to talk about in this entry...
When I was 13 years old I was a professional singer and dancer on the stage.
Come back in time with me...
I was in year 8 and I was at school standing on the side of the sport field one afternoon waiting for the school day to end. I was bored and I was being a recluse as I quietly sang a song to myself to keep sane. It was a Michael Jackson song, "Who Is It?" I think. I thought no one could hear me but I was wrong as a guy in my year approached me telling me that I could sing. I was flattered but I dismissed what he said thinking that everyone could sing. If you can talk then you can sing, I thought. But apparently not.
Ten minutes later as the bell was about to ring and I was walking back to the school quadrangle getting ready to go home and suddenly a group of people crowded around me demanding that I sing. Within ten minutes, the guy from the sport field who heard me sing had told people that I could sing and now they wanted a demonstration. So with apprehension, I sang, and they cheered and smiled, and I smiled too. These people, most of whom I certainly wasn't friends with by any means, now appreciated something in me. I'd found something that I could do and people liked it. It was very flattering.
Now as it so happened at this time, Andrew Lloyd Webber's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was in Sydney. A part of the performers in the musical is a group of children that were cast from schools in Sydney. My school was planning to audition a group of children for the musical.
Word got around the school that Mark could sing and over the next few weeks I found myself being asked to sing in classrooms. At first I was terrified and I'd sing every time with my face and eyes fixated on the carpet floor never looking at anyone. But my confidence built up overtime until it came to a point where it was a joy to be singing on stage. It was another world where I could leave behind any real world anxieties and where people at the time of all walks, from friends to bullies, showed respect and appreciation. It certainly didn't hurt my self-esteem :p (other parts of my school experience probably did, but that's another story)
Anyway, I was asked to join the school's entry into the musical.
So we got into the musical, and it was an amazing experience that I'll never forget. I was thinking about what happens in this musical last night and today. If Joseph's brothers had never betrayed him and had never sold him into slavery where he went to Egypt to be made the Pharaoh’s vizier, then Joseph's family would have starved to death in Canaan when the seven year famine later came to Canaan, but Joseph happened to be in the right place at the right time, even because of something that would have seemed not good to him at the time (being betrayed and sold as a slave by your brothers). It's an extraordinary series of coincidences and good luck on Joseph's part, but as Obi-Wan Kenobi said in Star Wars, "in my experience, there's no such thing as luck". And the mathematics don't add up to dismiss it to just "luck". I think it's the same in our lives. When I look back on my life, I was very "lucky" to get the role in this musical, but I could have easily not have got it. The boy in the sport field might not have heard me, he might not have told his friends, I might not have been able to sing in the first place! So when I think of the things that are good in my life right now, I feel blessed because it could very easily not be how it is. And when I think of things in my life right now that I don't like so much, I just have to remember that I don't know the future and I don't know what's around the corner, just as Joseph didn't know what was in store for him in the long term when his brothers sold him into slavery. Things happen for a reason and the future is not all random.
"Children of Israel are never alone. For we know we shall find our own piece of mind. For we have been promised, a land of our own!"