Melissa+M’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech



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Learn to Laugh at Yourself by Melissa M

=Text of Speech=

In the past two weeks, I have fallen and/or slipped four times: once in a pile of mud (which some of you may have seen, considering it was at school one morning), once backwards into a mound of wood chips, once down the stairs in my house, and once while I was sitting down (don’t ask how that happened, I’m still not even sure). This tally does not include when I strained a muscle my back while giving someone, who probably only weighed around 90 pounds, a piggyback ride because I was messing around, or any of my lesser stumbles, which result in scattered bruises on my legs. I might just be clumsy, or I might just have extraordinarily bad coordination; but whatever the reason, all I can say is that I embarrass myself, a lot.

I grew up with siblings who found me an easy target. I consider myself the second youngest of the family (yes, five minutes does make a difference), so I always wondered why my brother and sisters victimized me. I wasn’t the youngest, so you’d think I would be a bully, not the bullied. I asked myself this question every day, but the answer never arrived. At first, I would beat myself up every time I did something embarrassing (which, let me repeat, was, and still is, a lot of the time). It wasn’t until middle school that I began to deal with the jokes that were hurled at me and accept the fact that I was easily made fun of.

The answer to my question didn’t become apparent until this year, when I realized that it is my own fault for being an easy target; it’s easy to make fun of someone when they constantly do stupid things. People always say that because I am a “Marshall”, I must be smart. Sure, I can calculate limits, name bones of the human skeleton, and memorize fact patterns, but when it comes to street smarts, or really any smarts outside of school, I know absolutely nothing. If you were to choose between Steve Urkel and myself to walk down the streets of Detroit, I assure you that picking Urkel would be the better decision.

Now, I’m not calling myself stupid because I’m not confident in my abilities, or because I don’t believe in myself. Being called stupid doesn’t offend me; calling myself stupid isn’t a result of my insecurities. I have accepted that I am not perfect, nor will I ever be, and that sometimes I’ll do dumb things. When I was in elementary school, a friend of mine, whom will remain anonymous, and I would hit ourselves in the head with rocks at recess so we would get headaches and could stay in the nurses office instead of going to class. Now:


 * 1) I do not know why we didn’t pretend we had headaches. Remember, I told you earlier I wasn’t the smartest
 * 2) They were small rocks, not boulders, and
 * 3) We were small, weak elementary school kids, so we probably didn’t do much damage to our heads.

You can start to see how not smart I really am from this example. Anyway, when I realized my stupid tendencies were the fault of no one but myself, I started to look back at other embarrassing things in my life. As I did this, I realized that I have spent my entire life regretting these moments, and scared of what embarrassing moments might happen in the future. I decided that I should not be ashamed of these events, but instead be able to laugh at past Melissa for her stupid mistakes.

And so began my most recent philosophy to live by: learn to laugh at yourself.

And I began to live happier, because I could accept my stupid mistakes that I previously wasn’t able to let go of.

One thing that helped me to “fulfill this philosophy” if you will, was getting used to the fact that someone, who will also remained unnamed (hint: she is the only child in my family who is brunette), was constantly mentioning weird facts about me in her blogs. I didn’t necessarily want people to know that I used to drown my Sims or that I like One Direction, but this girl decided to let the world know anyway, and I’m okay with that now. As time went on, I began to care less about what other people though of those quirky characteristics of myself, and became amused at how she always managed to make fun of me in her blogs.

In the America that I grow up in, I wish to see people who aren’t afraid of the embarrassment that might arise from making mistakes.

In the America that I grow up in, I wish that everyone can laugh at themselves, as well as those around them.

Life is too short to stay bitter about the past and worried about what might happen in the future. Ease up a little; you only have one life to live, so make sure a good amount of that life is spent happy. Contrary to popular belief, happiness doesn’t come from fortune, fame, material items, or even other people. I believe that people achieve happiness by making themselves happy and being comfortable in their own skin.

So if you spend your life embarrassed to talk about your past and over-cautious in an attempt to prevent humiliation in your future, you will never truly be happy.

In the future, I want people to not only accept their imperfections, but also embrace them. Stop taking everything so seriously and live a little, you know. Embarrassing moments are a part of life; sure it may not the best thing to experience in the moment, but they’re sure as hell funny to look back on later in life. Without embarrassing moments, everyone and everything would just be boring.

In the America I grow up in, I wish to see happy people, laughing at the past and looking forwards to what the future holds.

So laugh loudly, laugh often, and most important, laugh at yourself. Thank you.

=Cite Your Sources=

Embarrassing Moments of Melissa Marshall written by Melissa Marshall