One of my music teachers once told me, "In your greatest limitations, you'll find your greatest freedoms." He was trying to convince me to compose a twelve-tone piece. For those of you who don't know what twelve-tone is, I'll try to be brief and basic. In our western musical scale there are twelve tones that move in half steps. A twelve tone melody must use all twelve tones without repeating any of the tones (except a tone that repeats immediately after itself) and the composer cannot use any sequence of notes that lends an obvious tonality - like a major triad. Although I don't care for twelve tone music I enjoyed writing it. It was fun following the rules and watching what came of it.
I used his lesson with my students when I taught piano. I would assign them to make up a song using only the black keys, for instance. This was an assignment I often gave younger students or newer students who were overwhelmed with the 88 keys in front of them. By limiting them to the black keys, they could freely move their fingers around uninhibitedly and make beautiful sounds.
I used to take with me what Douglas's mother called my 'possible bag'. Anything I would possibly want to do was in that bag. I took it on road trips, flights and long visits where I thought I may get too fidgety for proper company. Over time, I learned to grab only one or two things which focused my attention. The result? Instead of doing a crossword for 30 minutes, reading a few pages of a novel, jotting down a few notes for a story, paging through an Oprah magazine and nibbling on chocolates, I wound up actually writing a story or reading a few chapters in a book. In other words, I accomplished something. I was free from distraction. I was free from the urge to this or that instead of what I was actually doing. I was free from my short attention span because I had little or no other choice.
For the last few weeks I have been studying German one on one with various teachers. This has been very good for my progress as I am slow at comprehension. When I am the only student, I cannot rely on others to understand the teacher and follow their lead.
I have been writing and speaking on a few topics that are important to me - spirituality, prayer and God, for example. I was asked to report on what I believe. This, of course, I had to do in German. My first thought was that it was too complicated for my limited vocabulary. But since I had chosen the topic I took on the challenge. What I noticed was, I was forced to be concise given my language limitation rather than stating one of my beliefs followed by far too much of my reason and rationality to defend said belief.
Now, I know my teacher is paid to talk to and listen to me, but I could tell that I had the teacher's attention more intensely than I often have of people I meet to whom I'm speaking English. I believe this was because I had to be thought out and I had to limit what I said in words and time.
For example, I recently had a falling out with a very good friend. I was telling my teacher what happened. Instead of going into a gossipy, "She did this" and "She said that" and "Can you believe it?" session, I simply said "Life has thrown so many snares her way over the last several years, I don't think she can take anything going against her right now." Notice I blamed no one. Notice I didn't judge anyone's actions. I made a simple, profound observation, one that keeps her in my heart and my eyes on my behavior.
I talked about judging others and the fact that the Bible tells us not to do that. I pointed out that the Bible doesn't just say "Do not judge those who are not wrong" rather, it says "Do not judge". Okay, I know that's not a quote, but it's close enough for this blog. How, I asked, do we not judge that that we know to be wrong? Instead of going off on how impossible it truly is given the news as of late (the Sandy Hook Elemtary School murders, the Boston Marathon bombing and the English soldier killed in London, for instance). Instead of talking about how truly horrible these people are and how the planet would be better off without them, I looked at what may be the more basic root as to why we are taught to not judge. First, we don't know their back story, their history. We still don't understand mental illness, though we see its effects. Secondly, it's distracting for us to judge. When we stop to judge we stop living our own life mindfully.
I challenge you, dear readers, to write in X number of words or less why you believe in something which is important to you. You can start with XXX number of words, but, in the end, you must whittle it down to X.
Learning to do this and practicing it (there's that wonderful word again), I believe, will make us better arguers. Arguers in the debate sense, not in the sense of angry, bitter discourse. My husband, Douglas, is very good at this. He will sit in a meeting and listen for a long time before putting out his opinion. He takes in what others are saying while he resists interrupting and spouting every thought that comes to his mind - something which many of us do thoughtlessly, habitually . The old adage, "Think before you speak"is not easily done, but we can practice it. And, in practicing it, we'll have to limit ourselves as to how much we speak and what we say. Then, ideally, we'll become as respected as people like Douglas and be freer to share our opinions because people around us will know they stem from somewhere deep, not the tops of our heads.
