The Concert of Life

My son had a youth orchestra concert tonight, and as I watched, listened and sensed, equally, I realized that learning to play music with a group was very much like learning to live in a world with other than self. You can practice your instrument/yourself all alone and be unto yourself how fast/slow you want to take things and how in tune you want to let things be. You can decide to either let the wrong intonation slide or do it over, and no one will tell you differently.

Then there is the orchestra rehearsal. This is the time you get instruction. Are you playing/living too fast, too slow, too long, too short, are you counting right? Are you articulating correctly? If not, here are suggestions for you... You take them or you don't, but if you want to get along with the others, if you want to enhance not only your experience but that of the whole, you will listen to the instruction and try to make the most of it.

During the concert/being together with others in life situations, you make mistakes, and no one is there to correct you as the moment is gone. This is the time that you make your mistakes, and silently learn from them. A lot of unspoken, intuitive learning happens here, since you are self-guiding and evaluating.

I find this to be a great analogy. The concert/life in action.... you prepare by yourself and you prepare through instruction, but in the living of it, you are on your own, to rely on your previous work assimilation and intuition/insight/instinct.

When living your life/playing the concert, as the mistakes are made, they are silently evaluated and learned from. They are very essential to make because unless you make them, you are not going to know what you need to keep working on or change. This is so true in life-if you don't make the mistakes, you won't know what to move on to or out of... You have to experience the dark, so to speak, before you can even discern the light.

As I watched many of the young musicians, it was clear how essential it was to give them a safe place to play out of tune, to play during the rests, to come in incorrectly, and to not be judged for this as being wrong, but to let them silently and intuitively learn what was needed for them at that time. And how perfectly they will correct themselves if allowed to feel and learn without the interference of someone else, and the personal experiences of the other mixing in with their own insight.

We need to allow ourselves to learn in life, silently and intuitively, the lessons of the errors (or necessary learning tools, I like to say). We all know how much it stinks when someone gratuitously points out errors we make as we are going about our lives. I like errors pointed out when I am going to school, like having a rehearsal, but as I am going about living my life, unless I ask, I so enjoy the instinctive/intuitive learning that happens without utterance, but just happens.

Maybe this is why we cringe when offered unsolicited advice. We can learn all we need to know on our own, within the harmony of being with others and with our experiences, if we are just left to feel, sense, and intuit all that is going on with all our senses and not allow others to interpret for us.

Life is a concert... a blending of the talents and musicianship of individuals to make a beautiful compilation of harmonies...it all can be so pleasing, if we choose to see it this way.