courage
Daring greatly
When I was eight years old, my third grade class attended a musical at the local theater. I don’t remember the name of the production, but I do remember watching actors and actresses, dressed in ordinary street clothes, singing their hearts out on a stage set up to look like an ordinary town. Gathered in front of make-shift houses and under temporary lamplights, they joined with one another in exuberant song. I enjoyed the performance, but what I really wanted to know was this: Why don’t we always sing on street corners? Where has the wild exuberance gone? Why am I watching this on a stage? This was the world I wanted to live in all the time.
Of course, music can be heard in the background of daily life—cafes, elevators, cars, television programs and commercials, health care practitioners, movies, and grocery stores play music almost non-stop to excite, elevate, calm or soothe us. And every city offers a wide variety of musical performances for our listening pleasure. But these are nearly always passive experiences. With the exception of the occasional rally or march, we do not sing as a public. The free, exuberant, spontaneous, joyful shared song that we witness in musicals does not happen in modern life. Music is kept under wraps. For most of us, the joy of self-expression in the musical realm is something we do privately in the shower. Why?
Perhaps one reason is because it’s not “OK” to express yourself musically unless you have a certain level of skill and proficiency. I’ll never forget a Christmas Eve church service I attended several years ago. The pastor (a woman) played Silent Night for the audience on her harp. Before she began, she spent a few moments preparing us—she was learning how to play the harp, she explained. She was not a skilled musician. And sure enough, as soon as she started playing, it was clear she was a beginner. I will never forget her profound vulnerability, risking our snooty judgment and ridicule. In my mind, that tender moment will be forever etched in my mind.
For whatever reason, when I hear someone put down a person’s singing or musical performance, it always feels like a dagger in my heart. I had a friend several years ago who regularly scorned Garrison Keillor’s voice on his NPR program A Prairie Home Companion. “He shouldn’t be singing,” he chided, “he can’t sing.” Perhaps I am not well-educated enough to make an accurate assessment, but what I experience when someone sings is beauty. I love the vulnerability–the willingness to put oneself on the line and share one’s soul with us. The more timid the voice, the more captivated I am. I want to hear it.
The effect of this cultural ridicule toward inexperienced musicians and singers is to make sure that the rest of us stay quiet. We don’t dare share ourselves musically. Of course, any mode of creative work is subject to criticism and ridicule, but for whatever reason, the musical realm holds a much higher level of snootiness. A common reaction to someone singing in a ‘non-professional’ way is to put our hands over our ears as if we are in pain. Singing has become a performance for only a chosen few.
In her book Daring Greatly, Brene Brown writes, “To put our art, our writing, our photography, our ideas out into the world with no assurance of acceptance or appreciation—that’s vulnerability…..I define vulnerability as exposure, uncertainty, and emotional risk.”
Bravo.
Waiting at the abyss
Nearly everyone I know right now seems to be “waiting.” We’re waiting for our new president to take office of course. We’re also waiting for congress to make decisions about economic recovery packages and greenhouse gases and overseas wars. That list seems endless.
But I’m doing another level of waiting. Robert Romanyshyn called it “waiting at the abyss” in his book, Ways of the Heart. Romanyshyn writes about having the courage to stand at the abyss, “as a witness, not a judge, for what asks to be seen and spoken.”
These lines by T.S. Eliot capture it: “I said to my soul be still, and wait without hope; for hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith. But the faith, and the love, and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought…”
I’m waiting empty.
On self-doubt.
I’ve never been a confident person and sometimes I wonder about that. Every creative thing that I have done has taken inner courage and energy to break through my natural state, which is to dismiss and deny that there is anything of value here. I often find myself viewing people who are confident as being more talented and worth listening to. So that must mean, if someone is not confident, that they are not talented and not worth listening to….right? I know that’s not true.
Creative work, in whatever form, comes from a deep, heartfelt place. And with anything that comes from such a deep place, it’s natural to want to hide and protect it. After all, it’s precious, and we don’t exactly “know” what it is. That’s the nature of creativity. We not only don’t know what it is, we also don’t know if it has any value in the external world, until well after we’ve given it form. Somehow, we just have to keep listening to that quiet inner voice, and trust the process.
In his book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield has this to say about self-doubt:
“Self-doubt can be an ally…because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing…and desire to do. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are.
The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”
I love those last two lines.
Making good use of whatever resources are at your disposal
Lately, I keep thinking of the Spanish word aprovechar, which means to make good use of something. When I have difficulty with a particular class or project, I can view it as an opportunity to use whatever is there to the best of my ability, not trying to push beyond. I will make good use of whatever resources I have at my disposal, and those natural resources will be enough. In Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, Martin Prechtel distinguishes between courageous willingness and willfulness. When we are courageously willing, he says, we work by means of our natural souls with whatever is there. And when we do that, we are a “good gift” for Spirit.