I recently read Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming”, and was startled to see this admission: “I, meanwhile, had been so afraid of floundering, so eager for respectability and a way to pay the bills, that I had marched myself unthinkingly into law.” She and her future husband were just getting to know each other, and she was struck by the fact that Barack always seemed to know who he was and what he was meant to do with his life. He pursued that relentlessly, while she did what she thought she was supposed to do to fulfill some kind of idea about status.
Something else I read recently from author Steven Pressfield tied into this idea, claiming that we can’t be anything we want to be. “We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.”
When we parents tell our children, “You can be anything you want to be,” what are we really telling them? Is the sky truly the limit, or are we bound by something much more specific, something that is in our DNA and/or our subconsciousness, and is spelling out the path we are meant to take? Should we instead be telling them, “Find out who you really are and what you’re meant to do”?
When I was a teenager, I was a miserable, anorexic mess. I felt ugly on the inside, and had no idea how to emerge from the cloud I found myself in. I craved attention, so when I began studying the violin at age twelve, I noticed that, lo and behold, I began to get it. The harder I worked, the more attention I got, and that became my impetus for excelling.
I was inherently good at music - I had a great sense of pitch, an okay sense of rhythm, I loved the classics (list of old Western guys - Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, etc. that my parents would play on our turntable) and the camaraderie of music groups like orchestra and chamber music. But these things do not a profound musician make.
I was willing to work hard, practicing an hour per day or more as a beginner, winning kudos and challenges while my young colleagues were sloughing off. I became addicted to the “Look at me!” aspect of playing, and didn’t notice that I wasn’t passionate about the music itself. I was using music as a tool, not as a thing to be treasured. As I matured, I also noticed that playing the violin put me in an elite group of citizens, inspiring awe and adulation in the masses who came to concerts.
I thought I had found my calling.
Of course, I had a pretty good career that lasted almost fifty years, despite some real trouble with nerves as I matured. I taught, I performed, I built a booking agency, I managed non-profit music organizations, I raised money for the arts. In short, I kept performing, but also branched out. But there was always a gnawing feeling that I had missed something along the way.
Now that I’m retired as a musician, I am trying my hand at writing. It feels right, and I don’t have that driving urge to be noticed. I have more of an urge to become that thing I was as a child, but got distracted with trying to survive emotionally. To be someone who can contribute to humanity’s movement forward, even if it’s a fraction of a billionth of centimeter.
Isn’t that why we’re here, after all?
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