Joshua R.

Diaz Creative Writing

12-humss Reflection Paper

“Mandy Harvey and her song

Try”
Mandy Harvey is a deaf singer song writer who lost her hearing when she was 18
years old because of connective tissue disorder. She basically got sick and her nerves
deteriorated making her deaf. She was singing since four and left music after she lost
her hearing and figured out a way back into singing. 10 years after, she auditioned to
Americas got talent and got a golden buzzer from Simon Cowell.

Growing up, the only thing she wanted to do was sing, she ended up going to
school for vocal music education because she thought that would be her life. In college
she thought she had an ear infection which got worst and worst, and by Christmas that
year she was then told to be legally deaf in both ears. There was this one instance
where the teacher was going to play the piano and they need to chart out everything
that he was playing. She has her pencil ready and everybody else’s pencil started
moving, she was just waiting for the test to start and then one by one, every person just
got up and left the room and she didn’t hear enough to even start the test. That was
the last day she was ever a part of a music program. Everything that she ever wanted
are just going away and she couldn’t stop it. He’s dad suggested that they play a song
and she first thought it was crazy, but she got a guitar tuner, she hummed her starting
note and just went for it. Using muscle memory, visual tuners and trusting her pitch, she
was able to sing again.

Music for her now that she is deaf isn’t about the sound anymore, it’s about the
feeling. It’s not the dream that she always wanted, but its okay, she showed up and she
did something she never believed she could do.

In the song she wrote entitled “Try”, she made her listeners see two paths in her
life after she became deaf, one is to stop reaching for her goals and dreams in the field
of music and in life in general, and one is to continue the career she always wanted, to
fight for her dreams and continue living. In the song, she described how her life was
never the same. How she didn’t like to be the person that she became. How she didn’t
like the life that she had after the unfortunate event making hew world become a
sadder place.

Amidst that situation, she took the path that she knew will never be easy. After
she lost her hearing, she gave up, but she wanted to do more in her life than just give
up. She made a choice and that is to fight for her dreams, and her decision landed her
on one of the most known talent show globally which is the America’s Got Talent. With
the struggles she faced throughout her journey, even with her downfall, she was so
optimistic that she will be able to get past her struggles and disability, and take her
place in the field of music and triumph in life.

Mandy Harvey has affected me in a spiritual level, she inspired me to go against

the flow of our destiny and to create our own. That there is no one to blame if we don’t
achieve something we want but us. She did what was thought to be impossible, to be a
singer songwriter without actually hearing the sound of the notes, the harmony of the
music the pitch of the sound that she herself composed. She was able to get past
through her boundaries and limitations by challenging herself and by choosing the path
not every deaf people would choose, and that is the way to music. To think that she was
able to go through and carry on pursuing this path without one vital element on her
career which is hearing, just amazes me. She invalidates the excuses I make when I think
I can’t do something as she proved everyone that with the will power, perseverance and
strong desire of interest in doing something that we badly want in life, we can succeed.
That what we can’t do shouldn’t stop us from doing something that we love. Watching
her made me believe that there is nothing in life I can’t achieve.

Mandy Harvey needed to make a decision and choose a path, and that made her
life different from what she thought it would become. Her life was never the same
again. Her decision had consequences she needed to face and lucky for her, everything
worked out really well.

Decisions should be thought very carefully, because it would make or break our
lives and the future we’ll have ahead of us. In life, we would be subjected to situations
where we need to choose from a lot possible choices and outcomes, fields and paths.
We just need to look beyond all those possibilities and see what suits us best. The path
that will lead us to a more fruitful life, the path that will make us a better person. With
that, we can’t ever go wrong.