Giving up. It's easy, much easier than doing anything else, for sure. Yet we all keep going. We all don’t care about the easy option, we don’t care because we all have something motivating us. A family. A group of friends. A song. Anything really could be used. Whatever the case is, we all find the strength to get out of bed every morning. Sadly, that's where everyone’s similarities where motivation is concerned ends. Only a select few ever do everything they know they should. Seriously, look around, right now. If you are in school, notice the kids that are beyond caring, notice the empty seats of those who couldn’t even be bothered to show up. If you at work, notice the lack of passion, notice how everyone’s goal is simply to get paid and then leave. It took a song to help me find mine, more specifically, Eminem’s “Till I Collapse”.
     

I am motivated by something unexplainable. Like many others, when wondering why I do the things I do, like get up in the morning, or put good thought into an essay, or take my education very seriously, I can't seem to find the reason, not until recently. For a long time I didn’t think about it, I just kept going. Putting one foot in front of the other, for no particular reason. I hadn’t a purpose. My grades weren’t great, I didn’t excel, I didn’t care. I know now this is no way to live. Not only will you get nowhere, but it can be dangerous. Living like this only brought me problems. Fast forward to about 3 years ago, when things started to become difficult. I could no longer sleep through classes and still get a B or A. I could no longer not excel, as more was now expected of me. I was now forced to care about what I did not. This led to depression.
     

One day, I did not have the motivation to go to school, or even to get out of bed. I lied to my parents, telling them I felt very sick and needed to stay home. They believe me as I had rarely ever lied to them. I just layed there. I couldn’t fall asleep, so I listened to music instead, a playlist I randomly found on the internet. Then the song came on. The music started, and peaked my interest because I had never heard the tune. “Sometimes you just feel tired, you feel weak.” Immediately the song had my attention. It hit where it hurt. “But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength and just pull that sh** outa you.” The beat was getting to me now. “Get that motivation to not give up, and not be a quitter, no matter how much you just wanna fall flat on your face”. Immediately, I was up, my eyes open, and started getting ready for school. “What the hell am I doing?” I asked myself. That was the day I found motivation. I learned that I can be my own motivation.
     

Fast forward a year or so.  I have finally gathered enough strength to tell my parents about my passion, and how it does not lie in school and in a business job. I started working towards it, working hard. I promised that school would always be my priority, as it was likely to be more important in the end, but that didn’t matter to me. I would do anything to follow my dream. When I realized that meant graduating top of my class, getting into a good college, and likely graduating that with a masters, I started towards it right away. Studying, working, doing all the extra credit, all whilst listening to the lyrics. Everyday I found a new way to connect them to my life. “Music is like magic there’s a certain feeling you get-”. It truly was. I was working my hardest when listening. “This is your moment-” The song went on and on. Every late night, every time the fourth hour in a row at the computer started to discourage me, I listen to the chorus. “Till the roof come off, till the lights go out, till my legs give out, can’t shut my mouth.” The lyrics kept my eyes open, and kept me going.
     

Another year or so forward, I am a now a freshman. However, friends are leaving. Some move, some were forced to go to another school, others I just stopped talking to. I had more time on my hands, and started to work harder. I started online classes, I started to study for classes I already had A’s in. I became bitter towards people in general. I wasn’t as friendly with teachers that were wrong or were aggravating me, I wasn’t helpful to people, and people started to dislike me, some hate me. Even today, people resent me, they say “you like to argue”, or that “I can’t accept being wrong.” I simply couldn't care any less than I did about what they thought of me. My results spoke for themself. The song continued to remind me of myself. “That's why you see me walking around like nothing's bothering me,-” The song didn’t care about them, so neither did I.  “-even though half you people got a fu***** problem with me.” I always smiled when they yelled, I found it amusing, them telling me that I care too much. If the song continued regardless of what they said, so would I. “You hate it but you know respect you got to give me”.
     

Finally at the present day, I realize only now how naive I was being then, and repercussions that came with it. Sure, I learned alot from the song at the time, but at a cost, people are now near inaccessible to me, and are all under the impression that school is all I care about. I talked to some very wise people about how to tell if something is a mistake. They said that mistakes are learned from, and that a mistake is classified by whether or not you would do it again. I don’t think that's true. What I did was a mistake. The song is just a song. It wasn’t written for me, it wasn’t a message sent from some higher power, it was a song. However, I would do it again in a heartbeat. For everything that I lost, I gained tenfold. It took a song to teach me to not give up and to follow my passion, something that I now know without the use of a relatable subject like a story or song. It taught me how to disregard negative criticism, and most importantly, it took me off of a dark path. Some mistakes are just worth making twice.