Fake It Till You Become It

So, here's the short summary of how my life has been for the past two months in 2013, in America.

As some people may have noticed--or not--I made it to the Softball Junior Varsity team, which was pretty weird. I never played "formal" softball before, and seeing my name on the list... made me felt a bit happy for the effort I tried to put into things that I do. But at the same time... I felt slightly disappointed because actually I was indeed ready not to make it to the team. I was ready and won't have any regrets for it since I already tried how it felt to play softball even though not in the team, and ready to enroll to the track team--which didn't come true.

There was a slight disappointment during my first several practices, but overall, I think I started to overcome it--which I will explain later.

Also, important event on last February 18th, it was my host sister's 18th birthday! Having her 18th on the February 18th, isn't that sweet?

Basically, yeah.

Talking about my softball experience, I speculated for several reasons why I got accepted into the team. One that occurred to me is the fact that I'm an exchange student. Realize it or not, being an exchange student has somehow given some people that privilege to join new stuff--mostly because the prestige of having a foreign student in a school activity will sure give a really good image for the club's diversity--although that was just one of my skeptical concept of exchange student.

As a mere human, I love being treated special. Humans try to seek different things that they can think of that make them different from other humans in the world, to think about how the world actually revolves around them, to be selfish and self-centered. That's why those superheroes movie appeared, to make you feel proud of yourself, not being left out or normal. Nobody likes to be called normal, to be honest. We're the unique seeker, we hates similarity.

So basically, I love the fact that I am sort of one step ahead in life experience from my friends in here, America--although that is not necessarily true. When you become an exchange student, you just feel like you have those privilege, even though it's not stated for you. We're like little babies again, there will always an excuse to make mistake, because we will prevail.

But I hate it, after nearly seven months in here, the fact that I actually was afraid whether or not my coaches picked me merely because I'm an exchange student or because of my determination. You never know whether they really want you or not, and that bothers me. That scares me, to be exact. Because by then, nobody will ever take me seriously for anything that I did.

Gladly, I'm starting to ignore that. There's more things I should have been thinking about.

To be frank, this might be my first time doing team sport with all girls in my life--as I can recall. Even when I used to play basketball, since the girls were so few, we played with the boys as well. When I was swimming or in karate or in tennis, it's always mixed. It kinda shaped my paradigm about how hanging out with girls sort of scaring me since girls are like a back-stabbing knife. You never know what they're thinking about, how they see you, because probably they're not as frank as boys, but most likely, it's because I'm a girl and I know what girls do--which scares me worse.

I might be a friendly person to say Hi to, but I am not  a many-friends person. I get along with people who understand my philosophical views of life and those heavy stuff, instead of random life problems. Most girls that I know talk about random life problems, and only few that actually have the same interest as I do. So when I first played in the softball work-outs, I was as quiet as a breeze. Because I was slightly afraid with the pressure from the ladies that I have no idea what they're thinking about. Again, so far I'm pretty separatist, which I need to work on getting rid of it.

Living under that social fear sometimes made me feel like I'm not myself. I felt like quitting it and go to a much more diversed club so I won't have the same awkwardness with the all-female team. I got distracted by the matter pretty easily and I tried to seek answers.

Humans like to relate coincidences with their life, because we want to feel that the whole world was made only for yourself. As I was googling around some TEDTalks vidoes, I found a video from a speaker whose name started with Amy, and she was talking about body language.

I found this video very interesting because gradually, in the end, she explained about getting fit into a community. She told us story about how she had to "fake" acting like the students in her college until she actually become the student of the college.

See, this actually confused me a bit. Isn't that the way for you to grow is to love where you are and to find who you are, not to be someone else? Isn't that fake till you become it means that you became another person's personality?

Here's how I take it. Achieving success in life does not come by doing what you want to do since the very first beginning. Or shall I rephrase it, start off with passion ONLY. Like what I've written on my English essay, Passion can make your life lively but you cannot live ONLY with you passion. Because world does not actually revolves around you, or even if it does, you will have people who think you are the center--that's how they need you so bad.

By saying Fake It Till You Become It, you have to adapt first to endure the pressure and any obstacles. just like employees in a company. You have to adapt yourself with the condition in order to survive, like Darwin said, survival of the fittest. Then when you have got on hold with your surroundings, you know where you're going, you started to turn things the way you wanted to, because you've learned. So basically you're not losing yourself, it's just you need to put lots of effort to actually gain something. Because again, living is about give and take, because when you sacrifice your effort, you'll gain what you deserve.

So for every one time I was depressed because of the fear being surrounded with girls in a team, I always have a reason to swipe the thoughts away by the fake-it theorem. Because that's one way to be successful in life, you just need to explore more.

*At this point I was so sleepy that I'm afraid I will doodle with it.*