Being Wrong

At one point, I worked with an organization whose members endeavored not to make other people wrong. It was an actual agreement among the leadership of the organization, but it was also a practice encouraged among its members. Not making other people wrong may seem like an awkward turn of phrase, but it essentially means accepting the validity of someone else's feelings and perspectives without insisting on being right. When we get into a right and wrong mindset, it is usually ourselves we would prefer to be right and the other person we'd prefer be wrong, so agreeing not to make another person wrong is a way of saying, "I don't need to be right. I'm open to other perspectives and ideas."

The intent, of course, was to encourage creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, as well as receptivity and open-mindedness.  If I won't be criticized for what I say because no one going to make me wrong, then I'll be a lot more likely to contribute my ideas. The problem is that sometimes people are wrong.  Sometimes, people have faulty or incomplete information, and sometimes people draw erroneous conclusions from the information they have.  There are people and groups that continue banging their heads against proverbial walls because no one tells them that they're not looking at useful or accurate data. 

Now, you may conclude that there is a way to indicate that data is inaccurate or incomplete without insisting that an individual is "wrong".  That may have been the whole point of the agreement not to make other people wrong.  But when a person is on the receiving end of that communication, it can be pretty easy for our minds to translate even well-thought-out criticism as, "I'm wrong".  On top of that, one can spend so much effort verbally distinguishing a belief from the believer that any real meaning is lost. 

Of course, belief is the whole issue.  Once I look at a set of numbers and draw a conclusion, that conclusion quickly becomes a belief of mine, whether it's accurate or not.  Challenging someone's beliefs is a big deal.  It's understandable why a person would feel attacked when personal beliefs are on the line.  As you might imagine, many discussions degenerated into whether or not someone had made someone else wrong and never really got back to meaningful topics.  Sometimes everyone just drew different conclusions, and there was no way to reconcile them all into one perspective.  Even when you know that someone's information is inaccurate, if you don't want to be accused of making them wrong, you have to come up with just the right way to convince them to reexamine what they believe without having the tables turned back on your own beliefs. 

The result of that seemingly noble agreement was that everyone's ideas and perspectives were not equally considered, and everyone's conclusions were not equally scrutinized.  Nor should they have been necessarily, except that the claimed framework for interaction suggested otherwise. Just having a policy of honesty and maintaining an open forum where being wrong was OK would have been much easier and, I think, more effective.

I am sometimes wrong.  Everyone I know is sometimes wrong.  We get information and draw conclusions.  When we get more information, we confirm or adjust those conclusions.  We're doing this constantly.  There's no way that anyone can go through life without believing something that's a little bit off at some point.  The challenge for me is not to avoid making other people wrong; it's to be willing to accept when I am wrong about something.  It's not the end of the world.  If it's a big deal not to make someone else wrong, that becomes a threatening situation.  If someone suggests that I'm wrong, I have to defend myself because they're out of line?  Not really.  If we never figure out where we are wrong in our conclusions, we can never improve anything, unless it's sheer luck.  

There isn't necessarily a right and wrong in every situation, and some people will point out a perceived mistake when they don't have accurate information themselves.  Sometimes, there is absolutely a gentle way to let someone else know that they've jumped to a conclusion that doesn't quite make sense, and I'm all in favor of providing more useful data to someone if they're willing to hear.  I think words spoken in love will always be easier to hear.  But the biggest thing is not being afraid to be wrong.  It will happen.  Best to have trustworthy people around you who will send up the red flags rather than perform semantic acrobatics.  

Judgment Is Belief Used as a Weapon

Driving down the freeway, I saw an old van spewing exhaust fumes in a cloud behind it.  My immediate thought was, What a jerk!  (Actually, it was something a bit harsher than "jerk," but that will do.)  Then, I responded back to myself, Why is the driver a jerk exactly?  I drive a hybrid that leaves a much lighter carbon footprint than many vehicles, and although I am pleased by the sense of environmental responsibility, my primary motivation is that I get incredible gas mileage and spend less money on fuel.  I use canvas bags when I go grocery shopping, essentially because it is a very easy habit that I perceive as having a significant effect on the amount of non-biodegradable waste I create without inconveniencing me in the least.  We recycle, which doesn't cost us any more than having our garbage collected and is as easy as throwing something in a different receptacle.  Very low impact on our habits, for a perceived higher impact on the environment, whether or not it actually makes a significant difference in the grand scheme of things.

A depiction of beliefs turned into judgments?

So, when I see this van fogging up the road with exhaust, I label the driver a jerk because he seems unwilling to do his part.  I'm doing my part, so he should at the very least be courteous and conscientious enough not to smog up the road in his wake.  This unknown person became, in my mind, ungrateful, irresponsible, insensitive, unintelligent, and oblivious.  But wait.  What if the driver really is oblivious?  How much of a jerk can a truly oblivious person be?  And while I don't necessarily enjoy the smell, how much confidence do I really have about the actual impact of this vehicle's exhaust?  Aside from my indignation, I don't have a wealth of empirical facts to go on.

On that same trip, I was flipping through radio stations, and I happened to land for a moment on an individual making an outlandish claim based more on a personal victimization theory than on factual evidence.  At the time I didn't associate my own judgment against the van driver with the radio personality's tirade.  Rather, I thought, Why don't people use their brains?  And the dialogue in my own head continued, Maybe they do.

Everyone doesn't see the same things I do, and when they do, they don't always draw the same conclusions I do.  It doesn't have anything to do with right or wrong.  We all come from different circumstances and experiences with different sets of information and beliefs, and so we can't all look through identical lenses.  Although I can't be certain (since I'm not in other people's heads), it's as likely as not that other people do indeed use their brains to their fullest capacity, draw the best conclusions that they can, and choose the courses of action they deem best.  Or some people may simply be oblivious.  How would they even know if they are?  How harshly do I really want to judge someone who literally doesn't know any better?

At the end of the day, I am responsible for my decisions, and I want those decisions to make sense with my knowledge and beliefs.  I can't know what's going on in other people's minds, so it ultimately doesn't make sense for me to assume malice where there may be ignorance or even a thoughtful approach that simply differs from mine.  My conflict with thinking that each person is only responsible for his own life is that I believe that we are interconnected, that we have an impact on and are impacted by other people.  I don't believe that anyone exists in a vacuum.  Our actions (and inaction) have an effect in the world.  That belief provides a framework for my own choices, and it's easy to form an expectation of how that belief can play out with other people who have the same sense of connection.  But how does that work in a messy world of people who are unaware or who have deep conviction about an entirely different interpretation?

The best conclusion I can draw is that my sense of connection with other people does not rely upon their sense of connection to me or anything else.  To judge other people based on my impression of how they should act assumes that everyone should see what I see, know what I know, and draw the same conclusions I draw.  I don't actually think anyone can know how things ought to be, so I don't really want to put myself in that place of perceived omniscience.  All I can do is live out my beliefs to the best of my ability, and accept that there is a world of people who see things from different perspectives.  None of us are completely right, but none of us are completely wrong either.

When the Glass Is Only Half Full

When people talk about the power of positive thinking, sometimes they slip over the rails into "blind optimism with no regard for reality."  While I do think it's important to see the possibilities in a situation, I also think it's important to line up one's expectations and actions with practical reality.  Glass-half-empty thinking is problematic because it always reveals the shortcomings of a situation, but glass-half-full thinking runs the risk of ignoring pitfalls, or at least pretending that they don't exist in the hopes that luck will claim victory over logic.  Someone who sees the glass half empty is more likely to see that there is an issue crying out for a solution, but if you believe in the detrimental impact of negative thinking, accomplishing that solution can be a struggle for the pessimist who sees every glass as somewhere between half-empty and bone dry.

Which is why I have endeavored to formulate a new take on the glass: it's only half full.  It is on the road to being full, but it isn't there yet.  It isn't half empty, but it's only half full.  There is still work to be done, and that work can have a positive impact.  There's no reason to lament that the glass isn't full, but if a full glass is what you want, you can't ignore the fact that the glass simply isn't full yet.  It's half full, though, which is better than being less than half full.  To me, it amounts to recognizing whatever goal the full glass represents and acknowledging that I have covered some ground and still have a bit more to do.  When there is room for improvement, I can take action.  That's what the glass being only half full symbolizes to me.

All of this has come into play this week because of a job opening accompanying a program that involves playing the same music twice a day, five days a week.  If I go for the position, I could be working with some great people, and I would be facing the challenge of mental and artistic tedium.  The scarcity-theorist within me urges me to jump at it because it's the only accompanying offer on the table at the moment, but strategically, the timing of this position would eliminate any possibility of teaching a university course in the next year or accompanying college recitals or high-school solo and ensemble events.  As I spoke with a couple of people in the know about the opportunity, it dawned on me that I was selling myself a bit short.

It's true that I don't have a ton of opportunities for musical collaboration on the table at this moment, but that doesn't mean that I have to accept a position that is (by all reports) less than what I want.  Just because I want a full glass doesn't mean that I have to throw in anything that will raise the water line.  It matters what I want the glass to be full of.  (Horrible grammar, but still...)  My first step is to define what would equate to a full glass.  Then I can recognize that, at this moment, my glass is only half full.  That leads to identifying what I can do to get the glass a little closer to full.

When I start thinking that the glass is half empty, it can spark a bit of panic.  I have to do something about filling up the glass.  Anything.  That's often not a terribly helpful line of thinking.  I prefer what happens when I think that the glass is only half full right now.  Sometimes, when I take a step back, I realize that it's actually a little more than half full.  Sometimes I think that the glass will never be completely full.  And that's OK. 

The Illusion of Duality

Since I enjoy TV series and movies that involve science fiction, I'm happy that stories involving altered realities and quantum physics seem to be en vogue.  There is a somewhat disturbing trend with these stories, though, and I wonder how much is just a matter of convenience for the plot and how much is a fundamental flaw in logic.  It's not my intent to get overly technical, and my thoughts have led me ultimately to a more practical point, so I do hope you'll stick with me through the technical part.  I won't go too much into the plot of Source Code since it's still in theaters, and I don't want to spoil the experience for anyone.  It's safer to address the issue as it manifests in the television show Fringe, in which there is an alternate reality -- a world very much like our own with some subtle differences.

Do we need technology to create another reality?

The storyline of Fringe doesn't go into detail about how this other dimension came into being, but often such a phenomenon would be explained as two different branches splitting off from from the same trunk.  Some event happened one way in one reality and differently in the other, and that distinguishing event was the catalyst for the two alternate versions of the world developing differently.  One determining point split the two different incarnations of reality and sent them off in subtly different directions.  For more detail about the way this is presumed to work, you can check out the Many Worlds Interpretation, which is a thorough and widely accepted model.  Essentially, the assumption is that any time multiple outcomes to a situation are possible, all of the possibilities occur; we just witness one and keep moving forward in our experience.

A "Dual Worlds" model

What you will have a difficult time finding is a "Two Worlds Interpretation."  This is because if one assumes that reality can split into different streams as the result of several possible outcomes occurring simultaneously, one would wind up with many different "dimensions" from any one event.  Very few circumstances operate on a toggle switch, as neat and tidy as that would be.  While we want to see things as black or white, this perspective often does as much to trap us as it does to make our decisions easier.  If one wants to acknowledge the existence of other dimensions, there is no reason to assume just one alternative.  If two dimensions are possible, then a nearly infinite number of dimensions is possible.

Admittedly, that would make for a difficult story on prime time television.  In life, however, it can pay off to recognize that there are more than two possible outcomes.  We often have many more options than what we allow ourselves to consider.  When we look beyond the immediately obvious, our creative minds can get engaged in seeing possibilities that might be more ideal than anything else.  Some people believe that there is no way around their destiny, that Fate will carry them toward whatever is supposed to happen no matter what choices they make.  I prefer to claim a certain amount of personal responsibility for the direction my life takes, and with that in mind, I rather like the idea that there are always more options and possibilities than I might see at first glance.

Ghost Stories

Until we sell our house in Houston, our entertainment budget in Fort Worth is a bit scant.  Luckily, when we tire of board games and Netflix, we are easily entertained by free museums, theaters with great matinee prices, and drives down country roads.  As far as the drives go, Joy is enamored with bluebonnets, which are plentiful this time of year, and I am on the lookout for cemeteries and ghost towns.  It seems that every community has its own folklore about hauntings and spooky supernatural occurrences, and although I consider myself to be an open-minded skeptic, those ghost stories are still fascinating to me.  

Thus, when we made the move to Fort Worth, I was given a book all about the area's haunted locales, and when a friend came to visit on Friday, we decided to check out a couple of spots the author highlighted.  The first was Carter, Texas, a town that doesn't exist anymore except for some historical markers, an old church building, and an open-air, tin-roofed gathering area the author calls a "tabernacle".  According to the book, the ghosts of a couple of children supposedly still played in the area, but we discovered something that the author neglected to publicize.  At one end of the tabernacle stood an ancient piano, the victim of weather and neglect.

Ghost town piano detail

An old ghost town piano

Of course, I tried to play a few tunes on the decrepit instrument, and of course, they sounded creepily dissonant.  Although we didn't hear any ghostly children, we did hear sounds of living children and livestock from nearby farms.  It was easy to imagine how such noises, made ethereal by distance and intervening vegetation, could seem like spectral entities on a dark, quiet night in what remains of Carter.  But the fact that the author didn't mention the old piano surprised me.  It's not like anyone would travel miles out of the way to see a broken-down musical instrument, and given that the locals likely already knew about it, that old piano seems a strange thing to keep secret.  Given what I know about children and pianos, if there truly were any juvenile spirits hanging around, they would be hard pressed to resist the urge to play it (or bang on it, depending on your perspective).  Still, prowling around the ghost town and reading the historical markers was quite cool, and the discovery of the poor old piano was indeed a treat.

The author of my Fort Worth ghost book also mentioned a cemetery not far from Carter which boasts a glowing tombstone.  According to what he wrote, "the phenomenon is consistent, night after night, regardless of the weather or any other conditions that might affect it."  From his own personal account, this tombstone, supposedly 50 yards into the graveyard and clearly visible from the road, was "blazing away in ghostly iridescence."  We decided to check out this "consistent phenomenon" for ourselves, since we were already close by.  The experience was somewhat disappointing.  Although we waited outside the cemetery gates for awhile after the sun had completely disappeared, we never saw anything glowing with the intensity the author described.  We chalked up the alleged glow to some kind of optical illusion, but there was simply nothing there for us to see.

Which got me thinking about why a person would publish a story that was so easy to verify as false.  The Carter stories are par for the course: On certain nights, if you listen carefully, you may hear the ghostly voices of the children of Carter.  That kind of story might have people returning and hanging around time and again (although I can't say that such visits would benefit the local economy in any way).  To suggest that one visiting the cemetery would experience something specific with absolute certainty, no matter the time of year or weather conditions, is just a silly claim.  But we accept all kinds of silly claims all the time without verifying them, so stories about glowing tombstones seem like small potatoes.  

In fact, I think I have accepted a great many "ghost stories" as true, without bothering to verify them for myself, and I'm not talking about glowing tombstones and underage specters at this point.  From Hollywood movies to church pulpits to popular songs to adages that are somehow just floating through the collective unconscious of society, there are so many stories about how people should be.  I have fallen prey to other people's beliefs about what a husband should be, what an artist should be, what a responsible adult should be, what a friend should be, what kind of music I should be writing, what kind of connections I should be making, and on and on.  And as many times as I have accepted other people's beliefs, I have rebelled against them just to be defiant.  I know that most people mean well when they share their beliefs about such things, and I know that most people are convinced that what they share is steeped in truth.  Still, it takes a bit of work to peel back all of the layers of ghost stories that have covered my perspective of what my life is supposed to be like.  

Stories about glowing tombstones are easy to verify.  You drive up to the cemetery and you look out across the gravestones and visually determine if one of them has an eerie green ghostly blaze.  It takes an inner eye to verify all of the folktales about more mundane subjects, how men or women are supposed to act, how success should be defined, what one must do in order to be a valued member of society, and why that is of paramount importance.  Maybe some people find it easy to disregard such stories, but I know some people that take such beliefs very seriously.  Some of them might be true for me, but I will only know that for sure if I take those ideas from external sources and verify them against what makes sense to me personally.  If I don't see the glow, then I know that's one more ghost story someone just made up.  Otherwise, I am essentially always measuring my life by someone else's ruler, and sometimes it seems that no two rulers agree.

I will most likely keep enjoying ghost stories and my own amateur investigations of supernatural folklore, but I haven't come across one yet that has turned out to be verifiably accurate.  Likewise, I'll keep testing other people's beliefs that have made their way into my psyche.  Hopefully, I can peel away the ones that don't make sense to me and hang on to the ones that ring true.

Redefining the Unknown

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

I was reminded this week of Arthur C. Clarke's Three Laws, which have been oft quoted in science fiction films and literature.  In case you aren't familiar with these tidbits of wisdom, they are:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.


Although the Third Law is probably the most familiar, it was the first two that got me thinking this week, especially about the unknowable.

For a couple of years, I was quite intentional about making decisions based on verifiable data, and not making decisions based on things that I didn't actually know (like how someone would react, or what would happen in the future).  Sometimes these predictions seem like absolute fact because they are so believable, especially if one is aware of certain patterns.  If Bob has gotten angry every time I have mentioned his ex-wife in the past, I have every reason to suspect that he will get angry if I mention her again, even though I don't actually know what Bob will do.  Criminals sometimes convince themselves that they will get away with a crime based entirely upon false assumptions about what other people will or will not do.  Making decisions based on information that is created entirely in one's own mind can be dangerous, or at least frustrating.  Most people can't predict the future nearly as well as they think they can.

That being said, there are some things that are probable even if they are technically in the realm of the unknown.  Once I realize that Bob is likely to get angry if I mention his ex-wife, but admit that I don't know for sure what Bob is going to do, I can decide how much value there is in testing my hypothesis.  Dismissing a pattern of behavior entirely, simply because Bob's future behavior is technically unknown, is honestly a rather stupid approach.  Scientists operate all the time in the realm of the unknown, testing hypotheses to see how accurate their predictions are, and correcting things along the way to learn as much as possible and get to a desired result.  Strategists in many fields operate in the realms of the unknown, predicting (with varying degrees of accuracy) what outcomes will result in the future from actions taken right now.  They can't possibly know the future, but they can make predictions.

During the time that I was attempting to base all of my decisions exclusively on verifiable data, I lost a job, threw money away, and spent a lot of time on fruitless efforts, all because I could not claim absolute certainty about future events.  In so doing, I discounted a huge portion of my personal strength.  I am a person who resonates with Clarke's Second Law, willing to push past the knowable into the unknown.  But such endeavors are not usually done haphazardly.  Usually, a scientist conducting an experiment has some data upon which a hypothesis is based, and that hypothesis is fine tuned by a number of intelligent predictions.  It isn't just a matter of throwing a dart without regard to the dartboard.

In all honesty, I think that people who are observant can make a great many reliable predictions.  Sometimes our minds trick us into seeing "patterns" where none actually exist, but the answer is not to discount the unknown and operate completely blind to such predictions.  Instead, it is better to venture into unknown territory with both eyes open, aware that our forecasts may be inaccurate, but willing to test them and see what happens.  Playing it safe and hedging bets are the kinds of things that lead distinguished but elderly experts to claim that something is impossible.  It would perhaps be more accurate to use "unknown" in the place of "impossible".  Personally, attempting the impossible seems foolhardy and unsatisfying, but attempting the unknown can be pretty inspiring.

So while I acknowledge that I cannot accurately predict the future, I can also acknowledge that my strategic and forward-thinking mind is a powerful tool that can guide me in a keenly directed exploration of the unknown.  If all of my decisions are based entirely on what I can know with utmost certainty, they are based on inaccuracy and half-truths.  It is actually much easier to be manipulated when one discounts personal discernment as essentially unknown and unverifiable.  Rather than discount it outright, I now believe that it is better to trust myself and work toward verifying the intelligent hypotheses of my insightful mind, reaching perhaps a bit past what I know to be possible.  I'm not sure how a person can grow otherwise.

A Real Job

When I was on the threshold of adulthood (on which I sometimes feel like I'm yet lingering), my stepfather asked one evening, "When are you going to stop this music crap and get a real job?"  Or something to that effect.  My mind may not accurately recall his exact words, but I do remember him suggesting that I could be a dishwasher for a local restaurant if that's what it took.  Although at the time my reaction was fueled by teenage rebelliousness, there are still moments when I struggle with that question.  I have nothing against dishwashers, but after earning a doctorate degree, teaching at colleges, and directing a multi-disciplinary, inter-generational arts program, expecting to thrive on creating music sometimes seems like cheating somehow.

My stepfather's question made perfect sense to him at the time.  He chose a profession that reflects his strong work ethic, the kind of blue-collar career in which you know that you've been working at the end of the day.  He respects people that stand on their own two feet, people who are responsible for themselves.  A music career equated with a pipe dream of fame and fortune, slightly more respectable than winning the lottery, but less likely to happen.  Especially in the small town where we lived.  It has its own share of culture, but it simply lacks the critical mass of population to attract much attention.  No wonder he would suggest a more realistic course than being a musician.

Even then, I didn't see a music career quite the same way as he.  I simply wanted to get paid for creating music, in whatever forms that would take.  It wasn't as though I wanted to be handed something for nothing, I just wanted to make money doing what I loved to do.  Recently, I have made decisions as if I needed to earn money somehow so I could indulge in creating music.  I could see music as a luxurious destination, but not the path.  Somewhere along the way, I became unconvinced of the feasibility of just creating music and getting paid enough as a result.  Even though that had been the reality previously in my life.  Bizarre.

Relocation was an opportunity for me to hit the reset button on a few things, though.  I decided to identify myself (to myself and to others) first and foremost as a pianist and composer, and to trust that to be enough.  I don't need to add anything or take anything away from that.  It is an act of faith, and it is an act of authenticity.  At the same time, it is based in reality.  There are certainly people of my skill level and less who are doing just fine in music careers.  Perhaps partly because they believe it's possible to do so, at least most days.


Now I believe that it really boils down to authenticity.  I don't quite believe in "Do what you love and the money will follow."  I do, however, believe in "Do what you love and the satisfaction of doing what you love will follow."  I think that when people are doing something that has personal value, they will do it well enough to be satisfied.  Different people are satisfied by different levels of success, of course.  My stepfather is satisfied, at least in part, by doing something at which he excels, with the confidence that his effort is worth his compensation.  As it turns out, we have that in common.

Still Reflection on Troubled Waters

An accompanying job in one of my old stomping grounds has stirred up memories of a challenging situation.  While I'm not one to wallow in regret or rehash the past over and over again in my mind, I do occasionally consider what I could have done differently in a given situation, so that I might learn something valuable even if an experience didn't play out the way I would have preferred.  As I played through this particular sequence of events from my past, I came upon a startling realization.  Although I made conscious efforts to "not make the situation worse," there is very little I could have done to change the outcome.  It would have been more authentic, and perhaps had a greater positive impact on some of the people involved, for me to simply speak directly and honestly without going overboard on efforts to be diplomatic or polite.

As concise as I can be while still painting a more or less complete picture, here is the story.  I fired someone.  Actually, I eliminated their position.  I did so as gently as I could, and I offered another possibility for the person to be involved and continue to earn an income.  This individual was essentially getting paid for doing the same thing that several other people did as volunteers.  It was a bit of an ethical disconnect for one person to get paid to do something that other people did for free, and the budget wouldn't allow me to pay everyone I would have liked to pay.  However, I needed someone to do a different task, a more unique task that I could practically and ethically justify paying someone to do.  It seemed like a perfect fit to me.

Not so for the individual in question.  The position for which I wanted to pay someone was not desirable to this person, so when I stopped paying for her participation, she stopped participating.  I found someone else to fill the paid position and went on with my job.  It was, after all, nothing personal.  When I heard about another paying opportunity for which she was quite qualified, I passed it along, but she wasn't interested in that either. Instead, she started a whisper campaign to get me removed from my position.

One person who was sympathetic to her point of view happened to be the board chairperson, and this position held more power than any salaried position in the organization.  The chairperson already had some significant differences of opinion with me about the organizational structure.  I believed that the paid staff had been hired because of our expertise in our areas of focus, and that the volunteer board existed to guide and support the vision of the organization, spearheaded by staff leadership.  The chairperson believed that the staff were hired help who were expected to follow the orders of the board, lack of expertise or leadership notwithstanding.  This distinction was never clearly communicated to me, so I continued to operate under my own perceptions.

I knew that there were communication issues.  I knew that the board was slow to make decisions, and that many of those decisions were based on fear rather than vision.  I knew that there were rumblings going on behind the scenes and in the shadows.  In other words, I knew this organization to be like most other organizations.  So, I offered leadership from my position to support the stated purpose of the organization, not realizing that leadership was not really what was expected of me.

Eventually, ten months after these events began, it was suggested that I resign.  I did so, and they ushered me out as quickly as possible, with a polite reception and a plaque.  I received the plaque graciously and told everyone how wonderful it had been to be a part of their "family" during my time there, and I left it at that.  In the moment, I thought there was no reason to bring up any of the misguided or dysfunctional actions that led to my departure, since really there were only a couple of angry people with personal agendas that created a toxic environment.

Now, looking back at that situation, I realize that nothing I would have said could have made matters worse.  I'm sure there are things that someone could say or do that would have exacerbated things, but there was no reason for me not to be direct and honest with the people involved.  My situation would have been no different, and (although I doubt anything coming from me would have been received) they just might have heard something that no one else was willing to tell them.  Instead, I gave up and let them have their dysfunction, and in the process I didn't trust myself to be able to confront them with loving honesty.

Sometimes, being adept at self-deception leads us to the illusion that we are also effectively deceiving everyone around us.  I want to be the kind of person who will tell someone, "What you are doing doesn't line up with what you claim to believe."  Not out of spitefulness or malice, but simply because there is really nothing to be lost on my end and everything to be gained on the other end.  If I could go back and observe, "It must be frustrating to constantly be at the center of upheaval and turmoil," I wouldn't have been telling the chairperson anything astounding, but it would have conveyed that I saw the pattern of his involvement in one organization after another. 

Of course, I cannot go back and have any impact on that organization.  That time has passed, and I have moved on to other endeavors.  But I will continue to interact with people for the rest of my life, and I want to take as much as I can from my life's experiences, the ones I absolutely love as well as the ones that are frustrating as hell.  From that chapter, I can glean (among other things) that there isn't that much to be gained by me trying to "not make a situation worse."  I can trust my own authentic baseline of tactful diplomacy, honest care, and incisive discernment without adding anything to it.  It may not change the outcome in the least, but it will change how I am with myself, and that is ultimately worth more than anything.

Braving the Ice

When I initially made plans to drive back to Fort Worth after a couple of days of rehearsals back in Houston, last week's storm wasn't even on the radar.  As my travel day dawned, however, it became apparent that the trip would be a little more challenging than usual.  Most of the drive was just very windy, but as I drew nearer to Fort Worth, icy roads presented a challenge to which most Texas drivers are not accustomed.  As one might expect, the transformed roads led to transformed behavior for some people.

Normally, busy roads around here are an "every man for himself" affair, but the icy conditions made it impossible for people to go speeding along in an imitation of the Autobahn.  For a long stretch of the treacherous road, our cars were in a slow, single-file caravan, etching a cautious path through the ice.  Instead of driving in the midst of the typical road rally, I was a part of a united effort to navigate the roads safely.  Cars would exit or merge gradually into the determined stream of drivers, relying on one another's judgment and courtesy in a most unusual way.

We seemed to be crawling along, but the conditions demanded it.  At one point, a little red pickup wasn't satisfied with the pace, and attempted to go a little faster than the long line of cars.  The passing lane, being less traveled, had a much thicker layer of ice with no ruts from a caravan of cautious drivers.  When the little red pickup hit a patch of ice and went spinning off the road, it was confirmation that we were doing something right by taking things slowly and carefully.  I might have stopped or called for assistance for that driver if my entire focus hadn't been on my own safety.

Once I got into Fort Worth, the icy roads were still a hazard, but drivers were no longer banding together.  There were fewer cars on the road than usual, but each driver was going it alone.  The road conditions hadn't changed, but without the solidarity of a string of other drivers the experience was a bit more harrowing.  Still, slow and cautious got me home.  It was a great comfort to have that experience of safety in numbers, even though the last portion of the trip was on my own.  And really, it had to be.  None of the other drivers were actually going to my specific destination, so I couldn't possibly follow a caravan all the way to my doorstep.

Which is the blessing and the challenge of solidarity.  When that long stretch of vehicles slowly arced onto an exit ramp going to some other nearby community, it was a bit tempting to go along with them just for the perceived safety.  Maybe they know something I don't.  Maybe the way ahead isn't safe.  Or (more likely) they had a different destination than I, even though we shared the road for a portion of the dangerous trip.  How tempting it is to go along with the group, just for safety's sake, or even for comfort's sake.  It can seem disproportionately threatening to follow what one knows to be right when a group of people head in a different direction.

The group has its value, but those benefits must be balanced with trust for one's self.  If I didn't trust myself to handle the road conditions, I never would have made it home that night.  Sometimes trust is misplaced, and we hopefully learn to fine tune our perceptions.  The group experience can help to strengthen our discernment, so we don't go spinning off the road entirely, and a trustworthy group can help to keep us focused on the path we've chosen.  No group can replace self-knowledge, though.  When conflict arises, I believe it's important to remember what matters most and follow that compass.

Unseen Influence

Seeker's Journey will most likely resume its course at some point, but I want to share with you some of the big pieces that are falling into place in this time of transition (more on that in a moment).

Having never been to Fort Worth, I was delighted to find that people there were very connecting and warm.  In a conversation with someone on the Texas Christian University campus, I remarked on this and related my experience in a grocery store that morning.  I had popped in on that Tuesday morning to grab some juice, and half a dozen other shoppers greeted me over the course of that visit, some with a purposeful nod and smile and others with a verbal Hello or Good morning.  One person even complimented my tie.  This sort of thing has never happened to me in Houston, and I took it to mean something about me and something about the people of Fort Worth.

The person with whom I was speaking remarked, "The purple in your tie may have had something to do with it."

I glanced down and glibly commented, "Well, I do have some ties that tend to make me stand out in a crowd."

With a patient smile, the individual explained, "Well, purple is the school color.  You see a lot of it around TCU.  It's kind of a sacred color around here."

Of course, I laughed a bit at my own assumptions.  I don't doubt that Fort Worth residents are warm and friendly, and expect to find that they are so even when I am not clad in a sacred color.  But there was something at work of which I was not aware during my little grocery store stroll.  Although I knew purple was associated with TCU, I hadn't intentionally picked that tie because of its color.  Somewhere in the back of my subconscious I may have thought it was a splendid idea, but I certainly wasn't thinking of that connection even when someone directly complimented my tie. 

That experience has me thinking about other unseen influences.  Not fairies or guardian angels or ghosts, but the conscious and unconscious systems at work within ourselves or within other people (or groups of people) to which we are blind.  We operate on a great deal of assumption most of the time.  If we always assume the best about people, someone may take advantage of us at some point.  But if we assume the worst about people, we will likely see adversaries where there are none. 

Certainly other consequences abound from those extremes as well, but at the end of the day we must operate on some amount of assumption.  We can never actually know every single factor that will impact a result.  The secret as far as I am concerned is to maintain a willingness to evaluate and shift course when new information arises.  Which leads me to why I am suddenly moving to Fort Worth when I wasn't even considering doing so a month ago.

My wife, Joy, has accepted a job with Fort Worth Opera, doing something that she does well, connected to an art form she loves.  The whole process happened rather quickly, and I am proud of her for paying more attention to her hopes than her fears at the end of the day.  What it means for me is relocation to a place where I have no clear and definite plan, but there is some exciting freedom in that.  It will mean a rethinking of our finances, a retooling of how I spend my time and energy, and a chance to keep focusing on the things that matter most to me.  From what I can see right now, it appears that there will be immediate opportunities for me to be involved in the musical goings-on in Fort Worth, which can lead to new collaborations as a pianist and composer.  In a way, I've been preparing for this move for the past year.

Neither of us would have predicted a year ago (or even six weeks ago) that we would be relocating for Joy to take a position working once more in the opera field.  We had our perceptions of where various paths were leading, but we couldn't see everything influencing the direction of those paths.  The paths I have gone down over the past year have all taught me something valuable, even when I didn't stay on a path for very long.  I learned things I would never have truly learned otherwise, and some of those lessons have helped to define me.  Or, at least, they have helped me see the value in being honest about who I truly am.  I'll say more on this aspect of the journey next week.

What I want to clearly acknowledge right now is the importance of accepting that I do not see everything that goes on in other people's minds, and that I cannot know beyond a shadow of a doubt where a particular path will lead.  At a certain point, I have to decide whether or not to step forward on a path, with only partial knowledge of what may lie ahead.  But I can keep making that decision at every point along the way, taking in new information to guide my expectations and recognizing what I can do to contribute to the outcome I want.  If I want people to be friendly to me in a Forth Worth grocery store, I know now that wearing a purple tie will go a long way toward getting that outcome.  It might also work for me to walk into a place with a friendly greeting ready for the people I find there. 

Since we can never forecast every unseen influence, I think life becomes a bit of a game in which we win by doing our very best as consistently as we can.

Seeker's Journey: Four Travelers

As Seeker traveled on his unmarked trail, he occasionally met fellow travelers who had chosen an uncharted route.  Seeker's journey led him up into mountains, and his conversations with others helped him tremendously when the actual path was difficult to discern.  At times, it seemed that there was no real path at all, just a general heading, or a landmark on which he could fix his gaze.  Other travelers would tell Seeker about places to find clean water, magnificent overlooks, quiet thickets.  A few people Seeker met claimed to have been everywhere in these mountains, but few of them seemed earnest in such claims. 

One man was eager to compare maps with Seeker.  Unlike Seeker, he had struck out on his journey with a specific destination in mind: Unconditional Human Love.  Seeker had met other travelers like him, who could not find a way to take well-known routes and arrive at Inner Peace, or Renewing Solitude, or The Most Inspiring View, or any number of other destinations.  And so, they had taken an unmarked trail in the hopes of finding their own personal El Dorado.  Seeker had not found any of those destinations, but the conversation was pleasant enough.

Seeker asked the man about other nearby destinations before they parted ways.  The most valuable information often came from people who began answers to his queries with, "I don't know, but..."  This man's response especially stuck with Seeker.  "I don't know what's near here, but you'll be more likely to find it if you're looking for it."  Seeker thanked him and they went off on their respective journeys.

Another pair of travelers was headed back to clearly-mapped roadways.  One seemed rather disappointed with her journey off the beaten trail, but the other seemed quite satisfied and ready to resume a previous agenda.  As Seeker talked with them, he discovered that the two women had come from the same destination, and his concept of "desirable destinations" began to shift.  The same end point had left one woman feeling frustrated and empty, while her companion was full of vigor and purpose. 

Comparing maps with each other, the travelers confirmed that they were headed back toward "accepted" routes, and Seeker began to reassess his sense of which destinations on his map were truly desirable.  Then, Seeker was startled to learn that the two women did not even know if they were carrying a third map like his, with only an arrow upon it.  They seemed puzzled by it, and left unconvinced of its usefulness.  Seeker pondered how they had made it along any uncharted trail without such a map, but he shrugged and bade them a good journey.

The more Seeker conversed with fellow travelers, the more he became convinced that no destination was inherently desirable.  Many people who had wandered from well-traveled paths seemed to have a different sense of where they most wanted to go.  They still relied on their map of destinations, but they didn't concern themselves with which sites the mapmakers indicated as more or less desirable.  This got Seeker thinking about what adjustments he could make to his own map, which destinations he would label most desirable if he had made his map.   

As he was still pondering this, Seeker came across another man who seemed so light and carefree that Seeker's face immediately smiled upon seeing him.  When he asked the man about nearby destinations, the man seemed exuberant at the wonders that were nearby, but he could give Seeker no real indication of how to reach them.  So, Seeker suggested they compare maps.  

"A splendid idea!" replied the stranger as he withdrew a single well-worn map.  It was nearly identical to Seeker's map with the arrow and nothing else.  Seeker laughed a bit and looked at the man expectantly.

"What about your other maps?" Seeker prompted.

"This is the only map I use!  Each day I come across new and glorious reasons to appreciate this journey.  I'm not exactly sure where I've been, and I don't know where I'm going, but I know that there will be something to see when I get there."


After an incredulous moment, Seeker mused, "It is as if you are your own destination."

The smiling man looked at his arrow-map, and Seeker looked at his own.  As it happened, when they oriented their maps a bit, they pointed in the same direction.  So Seeker traveled with the man for a bit, hanging on to his other maps and considering what destination he may actually find desirable.  In the meantime, he became more accustomed to using a map to which he had paid very little attention before setting off on the mysterious path.  Although it was true that there was always a new and glorious reason to appreciate the journey, Seeker was convinced that there was a way to combine a meaningful journey with a meaningful destination.

Recapitulation

 In some pieces of music (specifically those with a sonata-allegro structure), the themes from the beginning return later on after a time of "development".  This return is called the recapitulation, and it marks a very dramatic moment in the music.  It's similar to hearing a jazz piece in which the soloist introduces the melody, and then improvises for a while, going as far afield as he dares from that original tune.  When he returns to the melody again, it is a striking moment that (hopefully) ties all of his improvisatory development back to the foundation of the piece.  The same thing can happen in Indian ragas, and in fact many other musical styles.  The moment of return to the familiar is poignant.

But the music is never quite the same the second time around.  Even if it held the exact same notes, we would still hear the recapitulation differently than the first iteration of those themes.  The development that leads up to the moment of return fills our ears with many different possibilities, regardless of the style.  The music at that moment of return could be identical to what we heard before, but we are different.  We may be excited or satisfied when the music gets back to that familiar melody, even though we hear it through a filter of information we didn't have before. 

The development helps us to appreciate the original melodies more fully by wandering away from the full blown themes of a piece and using bits and pieces of those ideas for musical meandering.  The development can be exciting, but almost always has an unstable feeling.  To our ears, it's restless, in motion.  The return to the integrity of the initial themes of a piece feel like a destination after all of the development's instability.  The recapitulation seems stable.  Emotionally, it's a clear sense of arrival.

Life does that, too.  As I have been looking at applying for a college teaching position after a few years of development, I have a comfortable sense of familiarity, and yet I am different from the person I was the last time I lived this theme.  My path has certainly held direction and purpose, but there honestly has been some instability in pushing against my own perceived limitations.  Covering new ground is exciting, but it can also be frighteningly uncertain.  Returning to the idea of teaching music at a university not only has familiarity, though.  I have greater clarity about that theme because of the time in between.

Having taken the time to discern what has greatest value in my life, I can approach the familiar decision differently than I did in the final months of my doctorate degree.  I know now how much I love being in the classroom and teaching performers the keys to getting beyond the notes and creating engaging music.  I'm aware of how valuable it is to me to nurture my own creativity, and I have a greater appreciation for organizational dynamics.  Essentially, I guess I'm more mature than I was the first time I started applying for teaching positions, although I wasn't altogether immature before.  I've been through a development section, and sending out letters of application and a revised Curriculum Vitae feels like a recapitulation--an arrival point at someplace familiar I can now see in a new way.

When a Setback is a Breakthrough

I had a conversation I didn't like this week. I've been talking to people I know in non-profit organizations about the launch of my coaching business, primarily because most of my experience is in the non-profit arena. I also believe in the stated vision of many non-profit organizations, and I would love to be a part of creating their visions. Many of these people know me as a musician and composer, but they don't have a full picture of my experience, so the conversations were a sort of re-introduction, as if they were meeting a part of me they hadn't seen before. Most of these connections were incredibly encouraging and rewarding.

One person thought he already knew all there was to know about me. This was the conversation I didn't like. Although I explained what sort of contribution I envisioned making as a coach, he kept mirroring back the label consultant, which has a much different connotation in terms of expertise, credentialing, and price tag. I listened patiently, wanting to really take in the challenges this person saw in what I am creating, recognizing that there are probably plenty of people I don't know who may draw the same conclusions. But at one point, I spoke up a bit more boldly.

It was when he stated very frankly, "I don't know how I could possibly recommend you to anyone. You have no credentials or experience with non-profit management, or a track record aside from a couple of music projects." That got to me. On a certain level, I started defending myself, but I allowed a boldness to be evoked that I often dismiss. There was certainly an edge to my tone of voice when I responded, but instead of brushing off the comment as ill-informed (or worse) and moving on with my life, I addressed the challenge head-on.

I went away from the conversation disheartened and questioning the viability of my vision, even though I had talked with several other people who understood and encouraged what I am creating. The truth is I have personally overseen the production of two CD projects, including writing and performing all of the musical content and forging alliances that would bring the projects to fruition. I have worked in non-profits for 20 years, much of that time in a leadership role, and that included religious, arts-oriented, and educational organizations. I have demonstrated in my personal achievements and my organizational influence that I can successfully create and follow a purpose-based action plan, and it's a skill I am constantly improving.

This is all information that most people will not have about me, unless I am willing to tell them. And something was missing from this individual's perception of me that didn't match up with what he thought I was creating, and he knows me as a creative person. As I mulled that conversation over, I realized that I was dismissing a huge portion of my identity in my new endeavor. My creativity is one of the greatest strengths I bring to the table, and it was barely playing into my action plan for establishing a coaching identity. When I began to think about how I could shift my "brand" and marketing to a creativity focus, I felt energized and confident. It fits.

What seemed at first to be a setback actually became a breakthrough because of what I did with that conversation. I now recognize that I will have greater success connecting with people if I am bold about who I am. And I am now consciously embracing creativity as a strength to be proclaimed. Creativity is a part of everything I do, after all.

Seeing Through Different Eyes

A few weeks ago, I gave up something pretty significant. I gave up my hair. Not all of it, but more than I have had shorn off all at once in about a decade. People have often told me that my hair is my most distinctive physical feature. For many years, it was fairly long. Actually, since I haven't updated my profile picture yet, you can still see what it looked like. It was definitely a radical change.

My hair said many things about me. I believed it communicated my creativity, my willingness to be an individual, perhaps even a conscious non-conformist attitude. Other people may see things I don't necessarily want to convey, though. First impressions being what they are, long hair may signify to someone that I am unreliable, a slacker, a trouble-maker, or any number of other judgments. Those things aren't true of me, and for a long time my decision was that I didn't care what other people thought.

When I look at my goals, however, other people's perceptions actually do matter to me. Much of what I am creating now is built upon partnerships of some kind, and partnership involves being mindful of how another person thinks and feels. Healthy partnership requires that I be the kind of person with whom other people want to partner. And I am in many ways. But people don't always get complete view of someone's strengths if they stop at their first impression.

Last year, someone I trusted told me that I wasn't going to have an easy time being heard by a group of decision-makers because my hair isn't white enough. I knew that what he meant was that whatever I had to say was going to be filtered through other people's opinions of what it takes to be wise, strategic, insightful, or even valuable. For some people, I am simply not old enough for what I say to have value. I can't do anything about that except be aware of it. But, I also realize that for some people, my long hair was an obstacle between their assumptions and my actual strengths. I want to build partnerships in which my strengths benefit and inspire others in what they are creating, so it's important for me to allow my strengths to be most clearly seen.

In the end, I am already used to a new hairstyle. I haven't noticed any radical changes in the way others treat me, and maybe I won't. What I have noticed is greater willingness on my part to be seen and greater intention behind bringing my strengths forward. I can't control how other people will see me or engage with me. At the same time, I can give others the best chance to see me clearly, and I believe that serves both them and me.

Beliefs Become Reality

Over the last two weekends, I have put my piano skills to work accompanying about 80 beginner-level musicians at their solo and ensemble events. Students from several schools gather at a host school and take their turns walking into what is usually a math or social studies classroom and playing their piece (with their trusty pianist) for a judge who is usually a complete stranger. For some, it is a grueling experience, and for many of them it is a lot of fun. For me, it has been remarkable to see what adorns the walls of modern classrooms.

Certainly there must have been inspirational posters of some kind when I was a young student, but I don't remember what they said. Posters decorating the classrooms I was in this weekend had phrases like: Surround yourself with what you want to become. (It depicted a rather dull pencil in the midst of a forest of very sharp ones.) Another read: Character takes courage... it requires doing what's right, not what's easy or popular. Of course, some of the messages were about how to treat other people, and some were designed to build effective habits. My favorite of those was: If you don't have time to do it right, you must have time to do it over. The ones that most caught my attention, though, were the ones that were instilling beliefs that may not be conveyed in any other area of a person's life.

We don't outgrow some beliefs. Whether they actually serve us well or not, we hang on to some ideas about reality without any concrete supporting evidence. And sometimes we even cling to conflicting beliefs. We may believe that it's absolutely true that strong moral character is desirable and requires sacrifices. And we may believe that it's absolutely true that you have to cheat to get ahead in life. One of those certainly wasn't on a classroom poster, but many people pick it up somewhere. Just those two conflicting beliefs can wind up meaning intense struggle about identity and defining success. And we have hundreds and hundreds of beliefs that we have claimed as truths.

Claiming a belief is true doesn't really alter reality, though. Sure, some people get more money or a better career position by cheating. Yes, the choices people make in friendships have an influence on them. But it also takes courage to do something that doesn't seem "right" to everyone around you. And sometimes it may be important to get a task done without worrying about whether it's done as perfectly as possible. The bottom line is: I get to choose the standards by which I live my life. I don't get to define Truth, but I do get to decide what I'm going to believe. And that changes everything about how I live.

About a year and a half ago, I believed that I was trapped. So, naturally, I started working on getting myself out of the trap... only to realize that I wasn't actually trapped by anything other than my own picture of the way things had to be. When I started believing something different about myself, reality started to look different as well. I don't actually believe that reality changed, but what I was able to see changed. Being willing to dance with what was verifiably true opened up possibilities that didn't exist for me when I was claiming all kinds of things as truths, when they were actually just beliefs I had chosen.

More to come on recent developments. For now, one last poster I saw this weekend (quoting Henry Ford, I think) : Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you're right.

Cause and Effect

Our brains want desperately to make sense of things. We like being able to point to causes for the things that happen. At the very least, we have someone or something to blame. That there are actual causes for so many events makes it all the more appealing. We just aren't always accurate in where we place blame. In fact, our minds fool us often enough that there is a specific term for drawing conclusions based more on assumption than actual data: false cause.

If I have a fight with my wife and wake up one morning to find my pet iguana dead, I could conclude that she killed my helpless lizard friend. It certainly makes sense. She was angry, so she committed an act of vengeance. It's what people do. I've seen movies and read books about it. But if I realize that the temperature dropped below freezing the previous night, I might conclude that he froze to death. If I care enough, I could start looking for evidence to support either cause and effect relationship.

When I remember that the power went out for awhile during that cold night, I could conclude that his electric heat rock wasn't doing its job. And in the absence of physical wounds on his fragile reptile body, I may owe my wife an apology for thinking she could sink so low. But my green, scaly confidant could just as easily have been sick. When it comes down to it, what do I really know about iguanas? Maybe I had been so busy that I never even noticed his declining energy and the glassy look in his eyes for the past week. He could have died of loneliness for all I know.

But not being able to draw a line back to a cause drives me crazy. I want his death to make sense. I want to know that I had some power to do something differently and get a different result. When it comes down to it, I want life to make sense. Every little bit of it. Knowing why (or at least believing that I know) somehow makes the things I don't like easier to accept and it makes the things I do like appear to be more than just happenstance. If I like what happened, I can attribute it to something that I did, or I can attribute it to a higher power. If I don't like what happened, I can look for someone to blame. That can be a higher power, too. Who ultimately killed my poor iguana, after all?

Uncovering this trick that our minds play on us is one of the building blocks of the tools taught in the More To Life program. Our minds draw shortcuts that make the most sense so that we can get on with the important business of our day without trying to figure out the why behind every event. But when those assumptions are wrong, we can mistakenly try to correct pieces of the puzzle that actually fit just fine. Or we can continue down a path that isn't really headed where we want to go. Which is why I value feedback from other insightful people who might see things I miss, and it's why I choose to open my mouth and express the things I notice.

We can't know the causes for every event. When we are committed to staying conscious, though, we can develop the partnerships and practices that will keep up us on track for what we want to create. And we can begin to recognize the difference between the things we actually know and the assumptions our mind tricks us into believing.

For the record, no iguanas were harmed in the writing of this post.

One Bad Apple

Yesterday I heard about an open position at a place where I once worked. The person who was in the position hadn't impressed the committee that oversaw his work, and they had decided not to continue his contract. In addition, they decided that they were going to revise the position to favor people that had a different set of credentials from the individual with whom they were displeased. Even though it is likely to be much more effort, it seems to make more sense to revamp the position than to consider that they may have just done a less than adequate job in filling the position.

The human brain likes to put things in boxes. It loves to label partly because it can make extrapolations about other things with the same label. If a person behaves a certain way, then other people with similar characteristics will behave in a similar fashion. If a situation has a particular outcome, then other similar situations with have a similar outcome. It becomes a matter of prediction.

We can predict how someone will behave based on their skin tone or age or attire, and we can determine in advance whether we are going to like or respect someone based on our predictions. Except that we are often wrong about our predictions. When we assume what is going to happen without regard for the actual relevant data, we are likely to be surprised. When we assume how a person is going to behave based on arbitrary attributes, we sometimes overlook useful information.

Sometimes we draw conclusions about a person's trustworthiness, capability, drive, or intelligence based on the flimsiest of observations. Some dangerous issues go overlooked while our attention focuses on less critical matters, all because we act on superficial assumptions. Some people are hired for a position largely because of their alma mater, and yet it is inconceivable that everyone who graduates from a particular school will have the same level of capability. At the end of the day, we cannot completely trust all of the conclusions we draw from extrapolation.

An alternative might be to assess things more purposefully. Awareness that our minds are likely hurrying us along to a conclusion before we have taken in all of the relevant information can give us incentive to slow down and look at the truth of a situation or an individual more clearly. This requires a certain level of consciousness, of course. I wonder how often challenging circumstances can be traced back to a series of decisions and assumptions made by someone on autopilot. Or a whole group of sleepwalkers. I believe that what we create tomorrow will be built on the purposeful decisions we make today, about ourselves and about the people around us.

The Illusion of Safety

I barely acknowledge some of the fears that drive my behavior. I am afraid of being perceived as "pushy," so I don't express the potential I see in some people's lives. I am afraid of being the focus of someone's anger, so I don't always support people on the commitments they make. I am afraid of not being accepted, so I keep to myself insights and ideas that could actually pave the way for someone's dreams becoming reality. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it most likely boils down to a desire to be safe.

Every day, I pass by many apartment complexes with "security gates," to provide an illusion of safety to the residents. I've lived in those kinds of communities. The gates, when they actually function properly, may make it a little tougher for someone, but anybody that really wants to be on the other side of the gate can find a way to do it. My mind sometimes has me convinced that by not sharing what I see, I am keeping myself safe from other people's judgment. When I take an honest look, I can acknowledge how silly that mental security gate is.

My hairstyle isn't "safe." I write music that could be called challenging on a few different levels. But I am not always willing to directly challenge other people's perceptions of reality. Even when their perceptions keep them from creating the lives they claim to want. It seems safer just to let people believe what they believe and behave how they behave.

My mind gets hung up on the idea of accepting other people. I want to accept people for who they are, and I want to respect the beliefs that they choose. But accepting people doesn't mean refusing to challenge them. Especially on the beliefs that they are acting on subconsciously. Like my belief that sharing what I see will result in rejection. What I actually want is to let my strengths be of benefit in other people's lives, and some of those strengths involve seeing potential that others simply don't see.

So the question becomes, how do I dismantle that silly security gate and the illusion of safety? Well, for one thing, communication is a skill that can bridge the gap between what I fear and what I want. When I am careless in how I communicate what I see, then it's more likely that I will say things in a less hearable way. When I communicate clearly and in detail the possibilities I see, and I am clear about my motivation for doing so, I create a space that allows for easier partnership. Or even space for others to springboard from my vision into a purpose of their own.

My willingness to be vulnerable leads me to recognize that I can be passionate about something without being attached to what someone else does with it. I am only responsible for me, and I am also the only one who can share what I see. It's not necessarily "safe," but really... what is?

Warum?

At a solo trombone recital I recently attended, a particularly convoluted piece (composed by my mentor, Art Gottschalk) was half musicianship and half performance art. It ended with the trombonist asking aloud, Warum? Several days later, that moment is still simmering in my head. Why?

Children are famous for asking the question incessantly, but almost everyone I know is intrigued by this question on some level: Why don't I have any money? Why did I get a promotion? Why is that person famous? Why are those people wealthy? Why did my grandmother die? Why can't I be in a functional relationship? Why did I get sick? Why did they make that decision? Why did that movie get made? Why is gas so expensive? And on and on.

In my life, I have been asking a lot of why questions, too. Why does composing matter to me? Why is it important to me that other people hear what I create? Why do I want to teach? Why do I want to live where I am? I want to know the reasons underneath my decisions and my actions, primarily so I can ensure that what I'm doing is based on something that matters rather than on my fear of what might happen.

The problem is that sometimes people will accept any explanation as an answer. Why don't you have any money? Because you haven't taken the right courses. Or because you work in the wrong industry. Or because you spend it unwisely. Or any other number of reasons. And there are enough answers that one can ignore the unappealing possibilities and focus on the more palatable ones. And justifying which explanations I accept (and act on) has been one way I've kept myself from truly creating what I want.

The truth is that sometimes we don't get to know why. Sometimes people get sick, and it doesn't have anything to do with their behavior or God being angry at them. Some people become famous or wealthy, and it might have more to do with their persistence than anything scandalous or worthy of criticism. Of course, it might seem more satisfying to come up with a convincing explanation that taps into our judgments and beliefs.

I could spend so much time researching or inventing feasible reasons why things are the way they are that I risk forgetting the most important thing: I can create what I want in my life. It requires knowing what I want, and it helps if I have a strong purpose. But there isn't a secret formula out there that is going to create it for me, and there isn't a proper way to do things that I need to learn. I'm not missing anything I need. It's just a matter of living out what I want to be. Why? Because I am who I am. No more and no less.

Defining the Path

When I first started submitting music to competitions and performance opportunities, I was often frustrated by the kinds of pieces people wanted. It was all "art music," but the parameters were usually very specific, and I didn't always have a piece that fit the bill. There were (and still are) competitions for pieces of 12 minutes or less for trombone, ukulele, and pipe organ, or other unusual groupings. Some prizes are awarded to orchestral pieces written by students under the age of 30. There are calls for unaccompanied vocal music with texts dealing with living harmoniously with technology. Maybe that's a bit extreme, but the point is that I felt lucky when I came across an opportunity that actually matched up with music I had composed.

Now that I am also looking for opportunities to get my music into films or television spots or advertisements, I am noticing some similarities. One opportunity might be for downbeat Electronica instrumentals. Another might be for quirky pop tunes with female vocals. Or dark heavy metal ballads about losing someone. Then, there will be a rare gem of an opportunity that seems perfect for what I have written. At least the people working on these projects seem to know exactly what they're looking for.

At one point, I was looking at all of this very much from a poverty perspective: There aren't enough opportunities for my music. Which means I can't succeed. What I've created isn't what other people want, so I either have to write something I don't want to or just give up altogether. In other words, the epitome of hopeless victim-hood. It can be quite a temptation. Especially when it means that I don't have to try to create what I want or to be "successful" because I can't have it anyway. And it won't be my fault because external forces were conspiring against me from the very beginning. Melodramatic perhaps, but I would bet that something similar goes on inside everyone's mind from time to time.

What's true is that I can compose whatever I want to. Opportunities for that music might fall into my lap, or I might have to do a little work to get a piece out into the world. Either way, there are plenty of ways that a piece of music can be heard. On top of that, I have enough experience now that I know what kinds of ensembles are consistently looking for new music. And I know what styles of music are constantly being sought by television networks and film projects. If I want to, I can write something that fits the bill with some confidence that it at least has a market.

Of course, a big part of it is recognizing how my strengths as a composer match up with the available opportunities. It will be a while before I have an opera ready to workshop, and it will be even longer before I become a yodeling female singer/songwriter. Those kinds of opportunities are actually in the minority, though, and there is a wealth of possibility when I am willing to see it. Besides, just doing what I'm passionate about engages my creativity a lot more than coming up with reasons why I shouldn't even try.