Susan Boyle, who recently performed on the U.K. television show "Britain's Got Talent," has captured the world's attention. She’s a 47-year-old unemployed charity worker who lives with her cat in a small village in Scotland.
My family (Charles, Selormey, Kofi, Florence) were watching it when Charles asked me to have a look. When I saw Susan, the first thought was, “she looked like a person with down’s syndrome” (without disrespect to people with Down’s syndrome). Her dressing, color coordination, appearance and even the way she was eating prior to the stage and her walking made me think “what is she doing there?” , but I was completely humbled after I heard her sing.
As soon as she walked on stage, the audience began to snicker and roll their eyes. Simon Cowell, the show's host, asked her some pre-performance questions in his famously condescending style, and to the audience's enjoyment, she answered awkwardly.
She was painfully ordinary, and everyone was prepared, looking forward even, to see her fail.
By now, if you don't know the story, you could guess it, right? She more than wowed them. She opened her mouth to sing, and, as judge Piers Morgan later said, she had "the voice of an angel."
She wasn't painfully ordinary; she was amazingly extraordinary. The audience immediately jumped to a standing ovation and stayed there until the end of the song. The YouTube video of Susan's performance has, as of Friday (NZ time), received more than 41,335,790 views and though the show is still ongoing has been offered two contracst already.
I am riveted, and a recent article in USA Today does a good job of cataloguing all the reasons.” We prejudged her by her looks and were fooled. We experienced the gamut of emotions in a few short moments: guilt, shame, vindication, hope. She's a modern-day Cinderella, and these days, it's a wonderful distraction and inspiration to witness the triumph of the human spirit.”(USA Today)
But there's something else Susan Boyle awakens in us as we watch her come out of her shell: our own selves. Who among us does not move through life with the hidden sense, maybe even quiet desperation, that we are destined for more? That underneath our ordinary exterior lies an extraordinary soul? That given the right opportunity, the right stage, the right audience, we would shine as the stars we truly are?
Although Susan Boyle became an overnight sensation, hers was not an overnight transformation. She's been practicing singing since she was 12. In her case, overnight was 35 years.
To allow yourself to be molded by your own gifts takes courage. You have to be willing to stand there, exposed and authentic, while the audience rolls their eyes at you and sneers, expecting failure. And then, of course, you have to fail, laugh or cry, and keep going until, one day, they stop laughing and start clapping.
Susan Boyle is a phenomenal role model for all of us, not just because of her talent or her courage or her perseverance or her supportive friends. She is a phenomenal role model for us because she is us, in all our awkward ordinariness and amazing extraordinariness.
It’s also a lesson for us all never to prejudge people before we get to know them. For us in Christ, the lesson is embedded right in the center of the gospel never to look down on people or discriminate against based on what we see, or hear about them, even their nationality, profession etc, but we see people based on who they are and the content of their character.
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