Today--all about today

When I turned 7 years old my grandmother bought me a piano for my birthday.  The furniture store delivered it in the middle of my slumber party breakfast.  I loved the bench before I ever knew there was a piano to go with it.  My aunt taught me piano lessons off and on for several years but I was never great.  It's hard to be motivated to practice when the lessons are free and there's no pressure to excel.

Over the years I've had some insight into my piano playing issues.  It's interesting that insight can come so late to the party.  Here's what I think was my biggest problem:  I couldn't keep going after I made a mistake.  I do this now with typing.  If I mess up a word I don't just delete the couple of letters that are wrong because my brain can't fix something in the middle.  This happens in my crosswords too.  If one of the letters is already filled in, I usually misspell the rest of the word because I don't figure the existing letter into the spelling.  Anyway, I digress.  When I play the piano, I often start over when I mess up.

Well today it occurred to me that I do this in my blog.  When I have a bunch of ideas that don't come out, I can't really leave them and stay current.  I stay stuck on what I should have done and the ideas that I only half remember from 3 weeks ago and lament that I'm behind.  It's stupid really.  I'm still back on our vacation in Utah and the sucky Halloween that came the same week as the Red Sox winning the World Series.  I don't want to leave things out so I freeze and don't do anything.  Again, stupid.

BUT,

Today I was really proud of my daughter so I decided that is a starting point.  Lucy had to write an essay for English and I convinced her to read it to me.  It was great.  She told me a few weeks ago that  she was supposed to write any essay about herself--like a college application essay telling why they should admit her to their institution.  The teacher told  them it needed to be about a life-altering event that has made them stronger, i.e. a death pr other traumatic situation.  I remember when the assignment was given, Lucy came out to the car and said she wasn't going to use Ian to get into college and she wasn't going to write the essay the teacher wanted.  Well, she didn't, and even though her peer reviewers didn't get it, I think it's fantastic. Here it is:


I've spent a lot of time pondering the complexities of human existence and the idea that we all have a predetermined "place" in this world.  This notion has always baffled me--that every human being on this earth has a niche to fit into; a space to fill;  a job to accomplish; and that if we don't succeed on this front, we're worthless, wasted, expendable.
the concept that every individual has one "life-altering" event that pushes them into the spot they're destined to occupy is ludicrous.  To value one moment''one choice''above others, assuming that that instance has a greater effect on our life than any other, is shallow and naive.  At any given point in time, we're faced with choices.  Each choice hold the potential for more choices, and so on.  We have an infinite amount of futures possible, and every time we actually make a choice, it kills a great deal of them.  In essence, every moment--every decision-- is life-altering, and the biggest life-altering moment in my life was the moment in which I realized this.
That realization helped me to understand that every choice I'll ever make is important.  I don't know what the outcome will be, so I've learned to weigh my options carefully.  At the end of the day, my  decisions set the course of my life, and I want tot make sure that that course is headed in the right direction.  Decisions kill futures, but they also create them, and that's the most life-altering thing I can think of.

Not bad for a 16 year old Huh?
After she read it in the car, Mikey said, "I have a Ronald Reagan quote to go with it," and he pulled it out and let us read it.  Wow, 2 kids who are really thinking.

The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the 'little' choices of years past - by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, [which was] whispering the lie that 'it really doesn't matter.' It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away - the decision that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self-indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity - or dishonor and shame.---Ronald Reagan

I'm glad I took the time to put this down.