It struck me when I was in fourth grade. I, Hyeji Suh, was going to be a K-pop Star. That’s right. I was going to be the next Korean-American selected to go train under prestigious entertainment companies so that one day, I could be on stage in hot pink skinny jeans and dance my choreographed dance in a group of 15 girls that are dressed exactly as I am. All while lip-syncing into a microphone taped to my face. And no, we weren’t inspired by the Pussycat Dolls. We are totally different. From that point on, I trained day and night to perfect the pelvic thrust of the century. I had to make sure that my hair snap would have sponsors begging at my doorstep by the time I stood on stage. There is just one problem: I don’t have any talent! And when I say I don’t have any talent, I mean that I don’t sing. And when I say I don’t sing, it isn’t because I’m too shy to attempt to belt out my best Mariah Carey (cause I’m not). It’s because I physically can’t sing without clearing a room, making my mother visibly cringe, or dishonoring my entire family. But, soon, I realized that I wasn’t cut out for K-pop super-stardom. And my dream of hot pink skinny jeans fizzled away.

Harlem’s Night at the Apollo’s headline reads, “Where stars are born and legends are made!” Since 1934, this world famous theatre has searched for untapped talent with their weekly talent show- but there’s one catch- fail to entertain, you get boo-ed off stage. Tell a bad joke? Buh-bye. Modern day American Idol has capitalized on the concept of crushing hopefuls’ dreams for our entertainment in much the same way as Night at the Apollo. So, what happened to all those hopefuls rejected by boos or the judges’ scathing reviews? Surprisingly, many became famous. Singers like Lady Antebellum’s Hillary Scott, Glee’s Naya Rivera and yes, even William Hung went on to have highly successful careers, along with comedians like David Chappelle. So, you may ask yourself, what distinguishes those who fail and stay down and those who take failure as an obstacle to overcome like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and even Walt Disney? In one word: adaptation. The problem today is that people have forgotten how to adapt to the challenges in life, whether in relationship with others or in relation to their environment. Everyone will face unique challenges in their lifetime. But it is in the ways that we react to those challenges that determines who will persevere and who will not.

We all have challenges in our relationship with others. Probably the biggest challenge is communicating effectively with our family and friends. Too often, people find themselves stubbornly clinging to their own ideas or opinions without listening to someone else’s idea or opinion. When this happens, communication can quickly turn into arguments. In fact, Heidi Grant Halvorson, social psychologist and author of Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals, notes that most relationships actually end due to miscommunication. She points out that “people routinely fail to realize how little they are actually communicating.” Nowhere is this problem more evident than in marriages. Or, should I say, in divorces.

According to the American Psychological Association, the current divorce rate in the US is 40-50%. And, according to Professor Peter Thompson at Florida International University, “If you ask therapists what brings a couple to counseling, communication problems are cited 87% of the time.” He cites a 1997 survey of marriage counselors noting that “communication difficulties” was the most commonly presented marital problem among couples. The heart of good communication is adapting to others by listening and embracing their different opinions and feelings. This allows relationships to blossom.

Learning to adapt our communication styles in order to maintain close relationships is hard enough, but what do we do when we lose the very people we love?

A sudden and shocking celebrity death last year was that of comic Robin Williams. On August 11, 2014, unable to adapt to the diagnosis and prognosis of Parkinson’s disease and crippling depression, he took his own life, leaving his heartbroken family, friends, and fans to adapt to his death. His death is particularly haunting because of his role in a 1998 movie, What Dreams May Come. In the movie, his character and the character’s wife are deeply in love and have a happy family with two children. However, their beautiful ideal love story comes to a skidding halt when their children die in a car accident. Then, the husband dies in another car crash. Devastated and heartbroken, the wife struggles with depression and finally kills herself, unable to adapt to a life without her family.

While the film is terribly dramatic, it points out the issue of not being able to adapt to the harsh obstacles of life. The wife’s depression is a normal reaction to multiple sudden deaths, but the inability to adapt causes her to cease to exist. Ironically, this is what happened to Robin Williams. The man who brought the world so much joy and laughter committed suicide to escape his earthly depression. The message is simple: if people can’t adapt to hardships in life, they either sleepwalk through life or cease to exist at all.

One person who truly understood adaptability was a young mother named Katrina Hobbs. She was one of only 4 people in the world suffering from Alveolar Soft Part Sarcoma, a rare and fatal disease and given only a few months to live. To make things worse, she had a three year old daughter, Ella, who she would never see grow up, never see go to the prom, never see get married. Rather than become depressed and angry, Katrina accepted her fate and chose to make the best of the situation. She created a series of messages for every possible situation her daughter would face growing up. She prepared the ultimate collection of poems, cards, letters, and videos filled with motherly advice and encouragement. She said, “I want her to know that I had already thought of her future before she was thinking about it.”

Katrina adapted to the situation. In this way, her love for her daughter could transcend even death. She had adapted to her situation and still found a way to be a mother to Ella, long after her own death. Katrina Hobbs’s story is adaptability in action: accepting a reality, not ignoring it, but choosing to beautifully adapt to her conditions.

So, okay…my dream of becoming a K-pop star didn’t really work out. And, although my dreams still haunt me with promises of hot pink skinny jeans and synchronized dancing, I have to say I took the downfall pretty well. I adapted to the fact that not only was I terrible singer, I also couldn’t dance to save my life. Ultimately, adaptability teaches us to respond effectively to the challenges of life. Change is constant, and unfortunately, so are disappointment and hardships. But, as the famous philosopher, Socrates, once said, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”