Hidden Figures
By Ilya Katrinnada
Today, my mum and I watched Hidden Figures. I had initially planned to watch it on my own, but I now see the blessings of having my mum by my side in the cinema. Hidden Figures tells the story of 3 bold African-American women who had to overcome the barriers of sexism and racism before they were given due recognition and equal opportunities to contribute to NASA’s ground-breaking missions. And it only made sense that I was accompanied by the boldest woman I know.
The movie left me feeling inspired and ambitious. I am not an African-American woman living in West Virginia when segregation laws were in place. However, like Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, I am a woman and I do identify as being a part of a minority race in my country. So there are aspects of this movie that I can relate to.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the pursuit of perfecting one’s craft, partly because I’ve been talking about it to my part-time gym instructor and full-time starving musician brother about creativity, and partly because I’ve been listening to a couple of Macklemore’s songs.
In Growing Up, the last lines of the first verse go,
Don’t try to change the world.
Find something that you love
and do it every day.
Do that for the rest of your life,
and eventually, the world will change.
My personal favourite lines from Ten Thousand Hours are,
The greats weren’t great because at first they could paint.
The greats were great because they paint a lot.
The best way to pursue perfection (though of course, Perfection is a trait of God, so one can only strive towards it but never achieve it) is to practise, practise, practise. Stop thinking about doing it, stop saying that you’ll do it, and just do it. There’s no short cut, no going around it. The three ladies in the film dedicated their lives to their fields of study and look at what they were able to do with a dedication like that. They led meaningful lives doing something that they enjoyed and believed in. And at the same time, their achievements were a big blow to racism and sexism that were so blatantly practised during their times.
And this brings me to my next point, which is that the sometimes the best way to prove a point is not through words but through actions. If you want to prove to someone that you’re good at math, then do enough math to be good at it. If you want to prove that you deserved the title of an artist, then make quality art. If you want to prove that your music is worthy of being played on air, then make good music. This is a very duh point, but honestly sometimes I think I spend more time talking than allowing my actions to speak for themselves.
There’s a part in the movie where Dorothy Vaughan told her two friends to fight for their rights instead of just talking about it (which they eventually did). Over the years of being in college and having strong-minded, vocal friends, I’ve learnt to not be afraid to let my discontentment be heard when the time calls for it (civilly, of course). I understand the importance of voicing out lest I want my unhappiness to fall into the pits of mere complaints. And it is crucial to not just let my voice be heard to anyone who is willing to listen, but to the people who are in charge and whose decisions hold a lot of power. I still wish that I have a lot more grace in this respect, but I believe that I’m trying.
Perhaps the most important lesson I gained, as hinted by the title of the movie, is that there are going to be times when my efforts will not be recognised. Katherine Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, about 50 years after John Glen orbited the Earth in the Friendship 7 capsule… a feat that could not have been done without her mathematical eye. Just think about the many great things that humanity has achieved, and the many more number of people who allowed them but whose names I don’t and possibly will never know. It must feel good to have our efforts acknowledged and appreciated, but I have to remember that that is not the point of pursuing greatness (besides, God sees all that I do). As hard as my ego makes it to be, I have to stop thinking about myself and how I can benefit from my own work, and instead, let the work carry its own significance.
Here, allow me to share two of Kanye’s quotes:
I don’t care about having a legacy, I don’t care about being remembered. The most important thing to me is, while we’re here, while we’re having fun, while we’re sleeping, breathing oxygen, living life, falling in love, having pain and having joy…what can we do with our voice to make things easier, to help someone to make it better for our kids.
It’s bigger than me. It’s about while I was here on earth what did I do to help.
Here’s one from Macklemore’s Ten Thousand Hours that is somewhat related:
Put those hours in and look at what you get
Nothing that you can hold, but everything that it is
And one more by Lupe Fiasco that he posted on Facebook on MLK day:
To put ones efforts into the creative process is a sacrificial practice. Making a new world from the components of the existing. In this, heavy lifting must be done. Trivialities must be postponed. The senses must be focused. Loved ones will go unattended to. Food will be ignored and hunger embraced for the sake of the task at hand. Reputations will be dashed to pieces. Tears will flow like rivers. Callouses will develop on the soft tissue of the hand. Patience will be tested. Sleep will be abandoned. Dreams deferred. And yet even with all this the goal may not be completed by your own hands. The moment may not come where you can stand back and admire the finished object of all your suffering. You may collapse exhausted at the potters wheel. Lifeless hands covered in clay but with the object showing only slight evidence of progress. For some projects are not meant to be finished by one person alone. Indeed I believe no one human has ever completed a single thing on his own but instead has only suffered to put his mark on the piece and then pass it along. And the next person steps up to add his mark until the suffering becomes to much to bear and then moves aside making room for the next one to pick up the tools. And on and on. This begs one to ask when will it be done? How many must suffer to achieve the goal of human transcendence over human indignation? When will truth and justice finally show its face in the marble blocks of lies and injustice? For some of us this is not the point. It is not to be complete but to start and then to never stop. To recognize that even with all the painful costs that are accrued in the process that there is still a priceless joy in the act of action alone. A person defining purpose from the senseless and endowing sense upon the purposeless. Bleeding but smiling. Crying but excited. Starving but feeding the soul. All the while creating. As we colloquially say “No Pain, No Gain” or as James Baldwin said “But art and ideas come out of the passion and torment of experience: it is impossible to have a real relationship to the first if one’s aim is to be protected from the second.”
Quite a lot of the things I’ve mentioned are things that I’ve been wanting to write about but couldn’t. Everytime I tried to do it, I’d end up not liking the outcome. So this movie came at a timely moment. Please catch it if you have the opportunity!
