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| I'm just one of your little ones (roughly translated from the German), Rainer Maria Rilke |
Lately, I've been struggling with a decision I made months ago about work and my career. I had then decided to leave my teaching job at the end of the school year, not pursue certification, and explore other career possibilities. I thought the issue was settled. But now I struggle, and I am returning to what I had originally forsaken a few months ago. New perspective is leading me to shake things up.
But am I shutting the door on opportunities I deeply want, but have too much fear to embrace?
Does our true face ever speak?
I often feel a tension between what's given to me and "the other" possibilities, whatever the heck "the other" is.
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One of my favorite movies, The Time Traveler's Wife, holds this tension so beautifully. A Chicago artist, Clare Abshire, falls in love with a time traveler, Henry DeTamble. He can't control when he travels, or how long he's gone. He is drawn out of linear time into present and future events, in the same way that gravity pulls a falling object back to earth.
Henry often travels to a meadow where he meets Clare during her childhood years. Later in her life, she meets him in "real" time, and they marry.
One is left wondering, did she ever have a choice? He would not have traveled to that meadow had they not fallen in love later in her life. But they would not have fallen in love had he not traveled to that meadow. His presence throughout her formative years melded her heart to his. It's a strange confluence of coincidence and fate, but also, choice.
//
When I was nine years old, I started taking piano lessons from an amazing teacher. She pushed all her students farther than they ever thought they could go, and I was no exception. I had natural skill, and I enjoyed the beautiful classics she introduced me to, so I practiced intensely. For many, many years, I was at the piano for hours a day. My skill increased, I competed throughout middle and high school, and I went to college with a music scholarship.
By my sophomore year, I started feeling burnout. I didn't practice as much as my colleagues, and I didn't have the desire to compete anymore. But, despite my degree requirements, I still wanted to give an hour long junior recital AND an hour long senior recital. My degree only required a half hour senior recital.
I gave those long recitals, and I taught 16 piano students those last two years of college. After graduation, I continued teaching, though I didn't always love it. I guess you could say I had a love-hate relationship with teaching. And still do. I'm still teaching, though what that's looked like has morphed over the years. Currently, I am teaching private piano lessons as well as teaching general music and chorus part-time at a private school.
Sometimes I wonder, did I ever have a choice to be in this field? This amazing teacher came into my life and impressed me, pressing music into my soul, imprinting in me the sounds of Debussy and Bach and Chopin.
//
In Rilke's poem "I'm just one of your little ones," he suggests that all paths lead to the "unlived things."
Perhaps this path of music teaching will someday lead me elsewhere, like flower farming, or pastoring a church.
Until then, I have a choice.
