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Finding Yourself in the Crisis: Lessons from High School Musical

Reflections from rewatching the HSM movies in my 20s
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Created by abgdy_

Published on Jan 17, 2025
a basketball sitting on a court
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Crises aren't just roadblocks, they can actually serve as opportunities for growth and transformation. These pivotal moments can reshape our understanding of ourselves and our potential. A crisis isn’t just the outbreak of a world war; it can also be breaking up with a boyfriend, failing a subject, or not knowing whether to choose between music and basketball (like in the case of Troy Bolton in High School Musical). You can have everything in life, but if you don't have confidence in who you are, it creates an internal mess (if you don’t believe me, ask Lindsay Lohan what happened to her when everyone was telling her what to do, say, and who to be).

Troy Bolton is the high school star, the most popular guy in school, captain of the basketball team, and let’s be honest: he’s the heartthrob we all had a crush on when we were 10. It seems like he has everything in place and he’s clear on his future: he’s the coach’s son and is going to earn a scholarship for college by playing basketball. The problem is, like all of us, he faces unexpected issues. Nobody expects that being put on a stage to sing with someone he’s never met will completely turn his world upside down. One day he goes to bed confident in who he is, and the next day he has no clue what the hell is happening to him.

What happens is that High School Musical was sold to us as the love story we wanted to experience in our adolescence: boy meets girl, girl meets boy, and three songs later, boy and girl fall in love. The problem is that in the three movies, while we’re being told how wonderful high school romances are, they are also slapping us with the harsh reality of growing up and stepping out of the bubble we were put into since childhood. Of course, they do this delicately, with Zac Efron singing and dancing on a golf course while having an existential crisis, or on a court while doing what he’s supposed to enjoy, or – my personal favorite – when he sings and dances around the school and ends up on stage shouting in frustration.

That’s when, at 20 years old, you watch the movies again and realize that when Zac says the world not only feels like it’s upside down but is also spinning faster because everyone around him seems to know what they want to do and he has no clue where he's going, it’s more realistic than you previously thought. We’ve been told from a young age that we are free to be and do whatever we want, but when it comes time to make decisions, we are questioned 70 times whether we are really sure if that’s what we want or if it should be something else. This leads us to feel ashamed of being ourselves and choosing a path different from what others would prefer.

I think that when I told my mom I was quitting the career I always wanted, she took it harder than I did, and I think Troy’s dad felt the same way when he told him he also liked singing. This happens because as we shape our identity, we break others’ expectations to satisfy our own, and although at 7 years old I didn’t understand why Troy couldn’t listen to his dad, now I understand the courage it takes to face things head-on, and how hard it is to realize that things are not as you expected. If you’re not changing, then the way you view things is changing.

In the end, I believe Troy managed to find his way – or that’s what he says when he decides he doesn’t have to give up either thing to be happy – and all the crises he went through during the three movies ended with a positive outcome. And just like Troy, it happens to us too. After the heartbreak of ending a toxic relationship, you know what you don’t want for your life. After so much drama and many crises, you can form your identity without fear of disappointing others. Because fear arises from others’ expectations, and you must live according to your own; after all, you have only one life, and it belongs to you alone.

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