Making beautiful music

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
-Ursula K. LeGuin

If you’ve ever gone to hear an orchestra play, you know that the performance doesn’t begin until the musicians first tune their instruments. The oboe sounds the note “A”, and players make sure their instruments match the pitch. It’s the “warm-up” if you will. Many balmy summer evenings I’ve sat in the amphitheater at the Hollywood Bowl as the sun sank below the hills, and listened to the orchestra slowly but surely get in tune. This delights me in ways I can’t fully explain.

Thus, I could thoroughly relate when a friend told me about his son’s response to the same experience. The young man was attending the Bowl for the first time, and his parents got him there in time to soak in the atmosphere of the place, and watch the orchestra tuning up; kind of preparation for the “real show.” After the concert, on the way home, they excitedly asked the boy which part of the performance he liked best. “Oh,” he replied, “The beginning, just before the guy with the stick came out.”

The process of orchestral tuning is fascinating! The musicians come on stage as individuals, playing various melodies and rhythms. There are moments of discordant sound, and of back and forth between the sections when it’s hard to imagine anything like beautiful music is possible. It’s more a cacophony of noise than a symphony of sound!

Then the “guy with the stick” (aka the conductor!) enters, and with a wave of the arm the many blend into one cohesive unit. The different sections, the string and woodwind, brass and percussion complement each other, and communicate the full message that is too deep for words.

And that lasts 24 hours.

The very next evening the orchestra will begin the process all over again. These world-class musicians will each come back on stage as individual parts, play, stop and listen, play some more, and make adjustments until they finally find unity. Orchestral tuning is a good metaphor for life.

There will be times when your world is in perfect pitch; everything has come together, you feel wonderful, you think lofty thoughts, and beautiful music is made. Then there will be periods when you feel splintered, your emotions are at war, and you think that snapping your conductor’s baton in two and storming off the stage might be the best plan of all.

But most of the time you’ll be somewhere in-between; happiness and sadness, joy and sorrow, peace and anger. There will be this strange mix of thoughts and feelings that you get to somehow make sense of. This is pretty normal. Growth and healing is a 24-hour miracle…one day at a time. Don’t be surprised by the process; and maybe even get to the point where you accept it.

Because in the end, life is much more about the tuning and the adjusting then it is about the concert.

Question for reflection: What are your expectations about life?