My Everlasting Inspiration

My Everlasting Inspiration :

First of all I would like to express my delight at being able to share my stories about Gareth Gates.

My name is Karen Hong from South Korea and I have been an ardent fan of Mr Gareth Gates since I came across his music and his awe-inspiring life story one and a half years ago. He was a great inspiration to me when I listened to his old interviews at a time when I was having such a hard time in my life.

I am innately blind, so I have been given a great deal of help since I was born. I felt weak and incapable but I realised that I wanted to repay all of the blessings I've had or even more to the world.

Nevertheless, I thought I was obliged to and I would earnestly love to, so I was determined to study in order to help the afflicted, especially immigrants and their children in my country who were suffering from being discriminated against, bullied and alienated.

However, everyone around me tried to stop me as they thought I would be too vulnerable and dependent to help others. My parents were particularly against me. I was totally depressed thinking there might be nothing I could do to give help to others.

In the meantime, I was listening to music as always; music was the only thing that brought me solace while things were difficult. I was streaming a music station on the radio and my ears caught a sweet and clear, appealing, breathtakingly beautiful voice; it was Gareth Gates. There was something enticing in his music and some of the lyrics in his songs were about pure love and others seemed to portray sincerity. I searched for his name on YouTube being completely ecstatic and to my surprise I got to know he had a stammer. What thrilled me more than when I stumbled on his voice was that he said on his first pop idol audition that he hoped to help people who were in need and he had committed himself to helping other who stammer, teaching children music and lots of charitable works as he said twelve years ago.

That was a ray of sunshine that convinced me there would be something I could do. I was encouraged and resumed my study. It was an amazing feeling (as Gareth often utters). Everything had come off well afterwards. My parents allowed me to keep studying and encouraged me to help other people. That gave me the courage to go to America and England to study English and cultures of people from many different countries.

His interviews, not to mention his tweets are so helpful for improving my English. He spoke clearly, fairly slowly and used good words and phrases to learn. Thanks to him, I was able to understand and take advantage of quite a few British English slangs and idiomatic expressions that contributed quite a lot to improve my English. When I came to England a few months ago, I was expecting to go to one of his gigs, listen to him performing, meet and tell him all of these stories. Even though my greatest wish of all didn't come true in the long run, I am looking forward to having a chance to visit England and attend his gig someday. I'm all set to support him whatever he does. I'll keep my fingers crossed for him and his career. Sincere thanks for reviving my dream again and becoming my role model.

Congratulations on opening a new page for our everlasting inspiration Gareth Gates!