When I was ten, my piano teacher entered me into a competition at the Irene Besse. I followed a line-up of a group of eight or so kids and by the time I walked onto the stage, all I could think about was how I couldn't remember which notes to play or when I was supposed to press down on the foot pedals. Getting up to play always felt like a dream to me. The stage was this surreal place where people's faces were blurred and the keys were unusually bright. Everything always seemed larger than life on stage. Perhaps that's how it's meant to be.
Anyway, when I had finished playing, I walked down the steps and took my seat in the back with my parents. I think we were running late for a dinner reservation (either that or one of us was really hungry) so we decided to leave early. I couldn't wait to leave. I wanted to wipe off the feeling of disappointment and try to forget it ever happened; I didn't know it then but that would be a feeling I would endure at every competition, recital, and exam thereafter. So we gathered our coats and tried to be as discreet as possible as we started to exit the building. And that's when I heard it. That's when we all heard it. Moments later I was on that same stage holding some gold musical note on a marble pedestal. Everyone's faces were still blurry.
Twelve years later and that trophy still sits on our mantle place. My dad never got around to engraving my name on the plaque (not that it was his fault; he's been very good about mounting the rest of my stuff) but to me that award has come to represent my life. We were leaving that night not because one of us was hungry. We were leaving that night because none of us thought that I would win. My parents have been really good about sticking around afterwards since then and have over the years even grown to expect more and more, seeing more and more letters in the mail and medals on the mantle piece. They think their little girl is something special, that she has a gift. But I know that none of that is true.
I feel like these past few years can be encapsulated in that musical note. More specifically, I feel like my journey here - to and in Cambridge - can be summed up in that one night. Even now I can't tell you which sentences in this entry have 'awkward syntax' or are 'clumsy'. I probably still have subject-verb agreement errors and I bet I've missed an apostrophe or comma here or there. My supervisor keeps telling me that I just have to find my voice, hit that 'graduate stride', that way of writing at this level, and that then I'll be okay. Except, it hurts each time I hear him say that because I know the reassurance is just a diplomatic way of saying what he really thinks. I feel so bad that I can't make him proud.
I'm still a novice at everything because I don't feel like I can wield the 'gift' that God has given me. I've never been able to write confidently, possess a style, possess a voice, and it seems the cracks are beginning to show. Figure skaters at the professional level never care as much about their jumps because they finally reach a level where the jumps not only look effortless but they feel effortless. Writing should be like that for me right now. At this level. But it's not.
I'm really confused right now. Despite the good grades, I'm embarrassed to show people my portfolio of work. Most of the time I don't even know how those grades got on those pages. Did they not read their own comments? Those comments stayed with me all throughout undergrad and the only difference now is that those comments have finally made their way into the grades here.
I know I am only here by God's grace. I know that those letters and awards were all by Him and not me. But lately it's been really trying and I'm trying to understand what He's teaching me because obviously I'm not getting it. It's frustrating to always feel like your life is up for grabs, up to 'chance', that you can never be sure of the craft within your hands, never be sure that you can write explicitly when you want to, write rhetorically when you want to add a flourish. I felt like this when I was applying for grad school last year. Knowing that I had done four years of English Literature and yet feeling as if I had not learned a thing. Feeling like I couldn't remember what I had read. Like it had all passed from me imperceptibly at one point. I'm trying to hang onto the things I read now but it takes so much energy out of me. It takes me ten times as long to read and understand something as my coursemates and there are days where I just feel like it's all too much.
It's just too much.
1 comment:
AUTHOR: Lish
DATE: 07/16/2006 02:56:15 PM
Coming back home to where people in general speak really poor English reminds me that maybe gifts need to be seen in some perspective. There is no doubt that by almost any relevant scale of measure, you do have the gift of language. You just might not be able to "beat" your peers at Cambridge - simply because of the nature of the place, and the fact that (as a certain Chinese proverb goes) "there is always a higher mountain".
But that's alright, because you don't need to "beat" anybody or "win" anything (in the arena of earthly competition) to make good use of your gift and make the Giver happy and proud. I would suggest that you think of ways in which you could do that, and perhaps when you find them, then even if you aren't "getting it" in the opinion of your supervisor or yourself, it won't matter quite so much.
We always want to excel at these natural gifts; we ought to pause and ask ever more diligently the question: "and why exactly do I want to excel at this *for*?" Finding answers to that question gives purpose to our pursuit of excellence; otherwise the search inevitably terminates in either arrogance or frustration. I hope you will be able to find your answers! =)
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