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Dalton
Roberts |
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WE ARE WALKING ORCHESTRAS
In writing a column for IPS Features titled “The Necessity of Playing Badly,” I had a flash of insight. It’s this: Our success in life depends on how well we conduct our own internal orchestra.
Once I stumbled into an orchestra’s tuning session. It was a shock. Pure chaos. A clarinet was dribbling out unrhythmic notes in a chord that clashed with some of the other instruments. The woodwinds sounded like a roomful of drunken birds. This great orchestra was making some of the worst sounds I have ever heard.
Then came the hour of their performance. The conductor tapped his music stand. Every musician came to attention. Then intricate blankets of sound unfurled across the audience, wrapping everyone in sublime music.
We are like this in our personal life experience. To sound great, we have to be willing to sound horrible. We must be willing to experiment, take chances and risk failure.
I played guitar so badly for so long, I am surprised no one struck me. I wrote a song about it:
I drove my Mama and Daddy crazy Plunking on my old guitar Then one day Daddy said, “Bring that thing” And he loaded us up in the car He carried me out to the edge of town Gave me twenty bucks and set me out And I still remember what he said When he turned his car around You ought to be in Nashville Really, son you should You ought to be in Nashville The walk will do you good (Happy Doghouse Music, BMI)
Pay attention when you are hitting bad licks on your guitar or writing lines that make you gag. Even in a poor guitar performance or a pitiful song, you will often find something that is good. It may just be one line in a long song or one chord change or a bad song that happens to have a great hook. Some of my best songs came from taking good lines out of bad songs. I still do that all the time. I keep tapping the music stand even if only one line comes to attention.
All bad things come to us to be redeemed and harmonized. That is one calling we all share in common. It surprises many people to discover that we have many callings in this life. Emerson correctly said our callings are in our talents and I have never seen a single person with just one talent. Therefore, many talents equal many callings.
A survey showed that 61% of adults over 30 still feel they do not know their callings. All they need to do is to look at their talents. Talents are built-in magnets pulling you in the direction of your callings.
We sin against ourselves and our brothers and sisters when we disparage unglamorous talents. There really are no unglamorous talents. I often cite an epitaph on an old tombstone in England that said, “Here lies John Smyth who cobbled shoes in this town 40 years to the glory of God.” When you took your shoes to John Smyth, you got them repaired and he threw in the glow of the glory of his energy field at no additional cost.
He had his inner orchestra tuned up. He had tapped his music stand and called all of his talents to attention. His heart and soul were in harmony with his hand and hammer.
To do this, we must make sure that all of our talents and every aspect of our being are reading from the same sheet of music. If your mind is on your work but your heart is not, you will be hitting some sour notes. There’s a profoundly wise verse in James: “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” Instability spreads throughout his orchestra.
Surely we can see that personal organization is really personal orchestration. It’s all about the way you play your own beautiful life song. ~~~~~
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