Clayton+B’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

My Superiority Complex

Those of you that know me may have noticed that I sort of have a superiority complex, so naturally I needed my speech to be perfect. Do you remember that one we watched about the Beanie Babies, I was inspired by that. It was serious, humorous, and had a perfectly timed ending that wrapped the entire speech up in a bow. It's the picture perfect speech, because you can actually visualize it. It’s sort of like a movie, with the plot, comic relief, and the climax that leaves you speechless. It’s brilliant.

As usual with any creative writing assignment, I waited for that perfect idea to come. Last Tuesday, it came. I was going to write about the beauty of life, and how in today’s world we are so distracted by things such as social media and our devices that we do not appreciate what is around us. I even compared myself to the beanie babies speech by thinking instead of hating on Beanie Babies because it represents Materialism, I could hate on Snapchat because it represents the distractions we have.

But then comes my problem, after practice last Wednesday I was talking to Wessal about what she wanted to write about and she had the exact same idea as me! The exact same idea! I could not give the same speech. Two of the same makes it lose its uniqueness, and with it its magic. Because you know, I needed to be the best

I thought I then found it Thursday night. Listening. All we care about today is our own opinions and our own voice, so naturally what is it that we all do? We talk. But no one listens. If we do not listen to each other, there is no way to value what we say, or understand what we say, and that is how nothing gets solved. Carry that on for another 5 minutes and that was the speech that I actually wrote. Yeah, I wrote a speech that I completely deleted. By the time Sunday came around and I reread it, I realized that I absolutely hated it. Besides from the fact that I realized I said pretty much the same points in my This I Know essay from way back at the start of the year, the reason I hated it was because I had tried too hard to achieve the magnificence of the “picture perfect” speech. It was way too forced, so then I decided to search for a new topic completely from scratch. And I know you guys are like, what topic? Seeing as how all I am talking about is my struggle to write an awesome speech. But hold your horses, because I am getting there.

Back to Sunday Night, my thoughts scrambled for a new idea that would create the speech of all speeches. The one that would fall down in history. After a couple minutes, boom! I got one! I would write about my struggles of coming up with a topic, and then I would talk about how in the future we need to not second guess ourselves, and to have confidence in ourselves. Now I know this seems exactly as how my speech is going currently, but this anecdote is not done with yet. I truly believed this idea would bring me to the promised land. All I needed to do was to start typing. But no, instead I went to the wiki to watch the videos of other final speeches, and you will never guess what happened. I saw a speech called “Being Sure of Ourselves” by Iva. I was like “huh” that speech might be a good one to watch cause it might be similar to mine, and low and behold, it was literally the exact same idea. So the disappointment kicked in, because I could not write this essay because everyone who had watched this video would discredit my own, because they would think it was a copy.

It’s like remakes of a movie. You take a classic action movie like Rocky or Jaws. Even if you’ve never seen it, you probably know something about it just from the name alone. But then you get to the sequels. Rocky 2, Jaws 2, Rocky 3, Jaws 3, Rocky 4, Jaws 4. You get the point. The remakes, generally speaking, are just copies of the originals. They bring nothing new to the table, they only try to recreate the magic of the original.

But you see, this is where I realized what was my actually problem. The fact that I myself, was a sequel. My only goal, was to recreate the magic from that Beanie Baby Speech. I was so caught up in the search for the perfect speech, in wanting to be the best, that I convinced myself that my own writing was not good enough. No matter what I wrote, no matter how good of an idea I thought up, no matter what, it was not good enough. It wasn’t my friends, or my siblings, or my parents, or my teachers that were telling me that my speech would be a failure, it was always the same person, myself. I was the one who was holding myself back. I was the one who put impossible expectations onto my speech. I was the one who did not appreciate my writing. I was the one who did not love my writing.

And you know, it's okay to want to be the best. We all should have goals. But we cannot have this thought process overwhelm us, that wanting to be the best is literally all that we care about, or think about. Whether it be writing, art, sports, or whatever it is we do, these activities are what shape our characteristics. They are what make us, us. But when the pursuit of being the best gets to the point where we consider anything that is not the best to be a failure, we are only failing ourselves. If we do not appreciate what we put forth, if we do not love what we are doing, then how will we ever be able to love ourselves? If I never love what I do, if no matter how hard I try, or how much effort I put in, it is not good enough for me, how will I ever be able to love myself?

Here is a staggering number. 85% of people have low self esteem. This means that out of the 35 or so of us in this room, 30 of us feel as if we are unworthy, incapable, or incompetent. We do not value ourselves as much as we should, we do not trust ourselves as much as we should, and we do not realize our full potentials.

In the America of my future, we will all love ourselves, as we should be doing today. I want us to believe in ourselves, to recognize and appreciate the talents that we have, even if we are not the best there is. I want us to be happy from doing the best that we can do, and not allow personal expectations, or societal expectations to take away from our accomplishments. I want us to not only accept our mistakes, but to move on from them and grow from them. But most importantly, I want us to care for ourselves and value ourselves, appreciate our aspects that are different from others, because our differences are what make us individuals, it is what makes us human. The biggest enemy we have is right here [point to my head], but since we are with ourselves 24/7, why can we not make that our strongest ally?

I spent the majority of this speech talking about how I wanted to create the perfect speech, but the expectations I placed onto myself made it impossible for me to ever create a speech that would have pleased myself. Instead of valuing my writing, I hated myself for not being able to be the best. Writing is a reflection of ourselves, and I was hating my writing, so I was hating my reflection. That is a dangerous road to go down.

The speech I am giving today may not have been the brilliant speech I so greatly coveted, but it is a speech that I poured my heart and soul into, and it is a speech that I am proud of. In my America of the future, we are proud of ourselves, we appreciate ourselves, but most importantly, we love ourselves. Thank you

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