Nino 1
Rodrigo Nino
A. Keshishyan
English 103
24 October 2020
The Light Within the Darkness
Day in and day out, we are encountered with a myriad obstacles and sometimes more
than what we anticipate, but we don’t realize our own potential to overcome those obstacles. Not
just overcoming those obstacles, but using them as leverage to help us improve and/or even turn
that obstacle into a blessing. Today in 2020, we are all put in the same situation with this
pandemic that none of us even knew about until the very beginning of this year. For many of us,
this pandemic has brought us a lot of unfortunate series of events like unemployment,
cancellation of sports programs/events, and several other unwanted changes. For others, as
strange as it sounds, this pandemic has been a blessing in disguise. Throughout the rest of our
lives, we will be tested with several hardships, but it’s up to us as an individual to correctly
decide what we want our mentality to be during those tough times; we can either let them
negatively affect us or we can choose to get up and go through that obstacle standing in our way.
In his TED talk titled “How Frustration Can Make Us More Creative”, Tim Harford talks
about the capability of frustration to be able to make us more creative and give a boost to work
with what we’ve got. Like I said, throughout our whole life time, we will always be dealt
unwanted disruptions and hardships along the way, but we will always be in control of our
attitude and how we go about tackling those obstacles. I’d like to point out when Hardford talks
about Jarret’s initial instinct to not play his music after he was given an old piano to perform in
front of 1,200+ people. Tim Harford then proceeds and says, “And I think our instinct is also
Nino 2
wrong. I think we need to gain a bit more appreciation for the unexpected advantages of having
to cope with a little mess.” Harford couldn’t have said this any better. Truthfully, many of us are
often encountered with an unwanted disruption and/or obstacle, and we sometimes let them stop
us or put us down. Instead, we should definitely be more appreciative of these moments, because
although they are aspects of our lives that none of us enjoy, they can also be the same moments
that can teach us just how strong we are mentally and emotionally, and how creative we can be
when we’re put in front of a little disruption or moment of frustration.
Creativity is sometimes brought to the light in some of the darkest moments, but we just
have to ignite the light within ourselves. Just like how Jarret’s initial reaction was to not play the
piano because it was old and had a few messed up keys, but then proceeded to play regardless
and still performed a great show. We all have the capability to shine even when we least expect
