Making Music

In 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert in New York City. Getting on stage is not easy for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight. That night, he walked painfully as usual, yet majestically, until he reached his chair. Then he sat down, slowly, put his crutches on the floor, undid the clasps on his legs, tucked one foot back and extended the other foot forward. Then he bended down and picked up the violin, put it under his chin, nod to the conductor and proceeded to play.

However, something went wrong that night. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. People could hear it snap – it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistake about what that sound meant. The audience thought to themselves: “He would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage to either find another violin or else find another string for this one.”

But he didn’t. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion, such power and such purity, and played the symphonic work with just three strings! The audience could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his mind. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet the audience, and then he said in a quiet, pensive and reverent tone, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

Reference:
Retrieved and updated from http://members.tripod.com/barefoot_lass/story.html

Seven Beliefs to Make You Happier

1. I am a human being and as a human being I have a right to make mistakes. I have a right to have strengths and weaknesses. Nobody else expects me to be perfect, so why should I?
2. I like to be loved, appreciated, respected and approved of but I can’t expect to have the whole world think of me like that or even all the people I know. Their approval is good but I do not have to depend on it to be happy.
3. Other people or situations can’t make me unhappy; it is what I tell myself that determines how I feel. If someone criticizes me, I can choose to let that upset me or I can choose to ignore it and learn from it.
4. I am responsible for making my own happiness but I am not responsible for making other people’s happiness. I am, however, responsible for my behavior towards other people.
5. While unhappy, sad or traumatic things may have happened to me in the past, they don’t have to devastate my future. I can let go of feelings about those unhappy times.
6. No matter what life throws at me, I know I can cope alone if necessary. I may not like what happens but as a human being I have been designed to cope with good and bad, happy and sad, and to survive! If I am anguished it is because I am fighting that situation. If I accept it I will have the strength and energy to deal with it.
7. I am allowed to feel anxious, frightened or unsure. There are human emotions in certain situations and I am human.

Coping Well

Susan and Neil were in a self-help group for parents of brain damaged children. Their eight-year-old son Jack had recently survived an accident in which he was knocked off his bike while riding to school. He was now severely brain damaged. Susan and Neil were both the least educated and sophisticated parents in the group, but their intuitive wisdom and insight were remarkable. While the other parents were understandably suffering obvious and varying degrees of distress, anguish and desperation, Susan and Neil calmly talked about Jack’s rehabilitation and how they would manage when he came home from hospital.

After a few sessions, other parents were beginning to wonder whether their apparent calmness was in fact a denial of the seriousness of Jack’s disabilities. In one particularly difficult session another parent accused them of being heartless as they appeared to be coping so much better than the other parents.

At this attack, quietly with tears in his eyes, Neil explained that they were grieving deeply for the loss of Jack who they felt had ‘died’ on the day of the accident. They regarded the Jack they now had as being ‘born’ on that day, and that this new son was someone they had to get to know and love. To help themselves, the family had held a very private memorial service for Jack ‘One’ so that they could move on to loving Jack ‘Two’.

Initially the other parents were shocked by Susan and Neil’s way of coping, but over the next few weeks they all said their own anguish had become more manageable as soon as they had accepted that the child they had known had ‘died’, and that a disabled twin had been ‘born’.

Some people seem to know the trick of keeping an appropriate perspective and deliberately choosing the easiest and most expedient way of dealing with things. People who cope well don’t create anguish within themselves by distorting the size of the problem or by fighting it. They simply acknowledge its existence and put their energy into finding a solution.