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. 

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.

Community Defined

Someone I am partnering with on a project recently described a familiar scenario: Several people were involved in a discussion, and they had reached an apparent agreement. Then one person simply restated what had been agreed, only to find that people had different understandings of their agreement. What had seemed clear was revealed to be subject to varying interpretations.

Sometimes language can be used to communicate with precision and clarity, and sometimes words can obfuscate. This might be intentional in some cases, especially in the realm of marketing and advertising, but in most circumstances, I think that people typically want to be understood when they choose to communicate. It's a huge assumption on my part, but I'm going to run with it.

As I have been considering many ways in which I can partner with others, communication has been rather important. And since I am a part of several different communities, I have been looking at many different possibilities for building on the relationships that already exist for me. I thought at first that a community's purpose would play a part in how communication and partnership could play out among its members, but I am finding that people often have different definitions for some of those purposes.

Even the word community is a bit muddy. I am a part of a community of people where I live, a community of different people where I work, and several other communities of people because of various interests. My definition of a community has been a group of individuals who have a common purpose, but I admit that I don't really know the purpose of many of the folks who live in my neighborhood. For some, community may have to do first and foremost with proximity, and for others it may have to do more with attitude than anything else. I have seen people who claim to have common purposes treat one another with suspicion and even malice. By my perception, that would make it difficult to develop a sense of community, but others might see no connection at all.

So, how can a sense of community be developed unless the word itself is well-defined by its members? Communication might be a start, and it couldn't hurt for that communication to be honest and connecting. Personally, I am considering some alternative words that might be less ambiguous. Partnership is certainly one of them.

Unreal Music

Yesterday, I received a CD and DVD in the mail from Gregory Wiest. On March 29, he included my song cycle Chasms on a concert, and he wanted to let me see and hear it since I couldn't make the trip to Munich. Actually, the original arrangement of the songs were for soprano and piano, but I made an arrangement for tenor, piano, and double bass to send to Mr. Wiest. He had sung a previous set of my songs, Pax Americana: Songs of Protest quite well, and I was curious about what he would do with the Sara Teasdale settings of Chasms.

As I listened to the performance and watched both Gregory and soprano Elaine Ortiz-Arandes (whom he enlisted to sing the songs from Chasms that had more of a female persona), I was aware of a pair of thoughts that kept bubbling up. The first was something like: Wow, that was perfect... just like it was in my head. The second was some variation of: Huh, I didn't expect that... I never thought of it/heard it that way. As a composer, this was a particularly interesting phenomenon. I was being reminded again that "my" music is actually an abstract and unreal article. What gets created and heard is a collaboration of my creative efforts and the interpretation of a group of performers.

As I write this, the Lord of Life Lutheran Church Choir is rehearsing a piece I finished this afternoon. Talk about getting things in just under the wire! Right now, the piece only exists in my imagination. I've notated the sounds I imagine to the best of my ability, and they will have the (hopefully enjoyable) task of translating it into actual sound. And no matter how many times they sing it or how many other choirs perform it, the piece will probably never sound exactly the same twice. More to the point, I doubt anyone will ever hear exactly what I imagine when any of my pieces are performed.

I actually love hearing how performers interpret my music (despite the fact that I am a pretty nervous audience member until about a minute into a piece). Of course, I want a piece to approach the idealized sounds I have in my head, and some performances are closer than others. But the fact that people choose to perform my music in the first place is flattering. When I can tell that they are pushing themselves a little bit and still having fun, it's even more satisfying. I used to think of composing as a rather isolated endeavor, and some phases of the process certainly are. But the more I broaden my understanding of exactly what happens with a piece of music, the more I recognize how relational the whole process is. And I want to write more.