What I’ve learnt from The Voice about Hope

It struck me the other day after burning countless weekday nights on five seasons of the reality TV singing competition, The Voice, that at the end of the day, it really (and sadly) isn’t about the voice.

It might be because I’m nursing a broken heart after my favorite contestant was booted off Season 7 of the US show after delivering a jaw-dropping and technically flawless performance. Of course, it’s hard to be objective when it comes to voices, but when you’re given a standing ovation by all four judges after your performance, it does seem a little cruel that you have to bid farewell to the stage so abruptly. (In case you’re wondering what happened, he didn’t get the audience vote and his coach didn’t use the save vote on him either.)

He wasn’t the only one to receive the cruel cut. Other outstanding singers have had to take a bow early on in the game, mostly because their coaches had a better idea on how to train their team members or they just weren’t the ones their coaches’ “guts” were prompting them to pick.

Whatever the reason, whether one gets to stay or leave usually has very little, if not nothing to do with their voice. And while I don’t deny that just being on the show provides a great opportunity for unknown singers to jump-start their music career, there can only be one winner at the end of the day. Even if you do win The Voice, it doesn’t guarantee your success in the entertainment industry. (None of the past six winners of the hugely popular TV show have actually had a breakthrough in their singing careers.)

So if you think about how the game is played and what your prospects are, it’s almost depressing. No matter how good a singer you are, how hard you practice, or how much your coach loves you—nothing guarantees your success eventually. Worse still, there’s nothing you can do about it.

A more important revelation I had while nursing my broken heart was that The Voice in essence, is life. Even if you’re the smartest man on the planet, you work like a dog or your boss loves you—success, or for that matter, a smooth-sailing life, is never guaranteed. In the meritocratic society like the one I live in, I’m trained to believe that you reap what you sow. Do well and you’ll be rewarded.

But more often than not, life chooses not to work according to the formula we’ve nicely determined. What hope is there after we’ve exhausted everything we’ve got? Perhaps that’s why a concept like hope is very much needed in the world we live in. Is there actual hope we can hold on to in a world permeated with uncertainty, unfairness, and even inequality?

I believe the answer is yes. Sure, the world is unfair and that’s a fact we all have to accept, but there is real, tangible hope if we choose to believe in the one who has made it possible for us to be hopeful to the end of our lives. And the best part is, it doesn’t rely on how well we perform.

For an average intellect person like me, this news is life-changing and profoundly comforting. No matter how badly or well I perform and how my life turns out, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. There is more to life than this short temporal stay and I know for sure that my eternity is secure in a far better place because of what He has done. He, the only one who can bring true hope in our lives if we choose to believe, is Jesus Christ.

Photo Credit: AXN