Thanksgiving

As always, my thoughts are never far from my friends and colleagues in the US, and through social media, I’m sharing in Thanksgiving celebrations from afar. At this stage of the year, when the summer break beckons but has not quite arrived, fatigue can be high. Being a musician wearing many different hats, it is very easy to be caught up in the whirlwind of the endless to-do list, from promoting concerts to organising tablecloths for the after party (let alone chasing thousands of black dots around the page), while trying to reconcile students’ path in their learning process with the reality of end of year exams, which sometimes feels like a rude interruption. 

For me, Thanksgiving is a great reminder to pause, reflect, and take the time to be grateful for the gifts in our life. It is an opportunity to remember that we choose to be a musician, and the path we are following. Sure, with that choice comes everything in that territory, including long hours. Yet through that choice, we have the great joy of spending our lives getting to know wonderful music on ever-deeper levels, sharing the lived experience of performance with dear friends, those who support us and  love music, and forming special friendships with the wonderful, eccentric and inspirational characters that one finds in the arts. We have the gift of touching our students’ lives for as long they choose to connect with us, learning in turn from their gifts, successes, struggles, insights and the ongoing relationship as time passes.  We can continue to deepen the cyclical process of receiving in order to give, through the great gift of ongoing learning with teachers who choose to share their great wisdom and experience with us.

We are very blessed to have such rich lives in music. Happy Thanksgiving! 

 

gratitude

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