It’s Not About You
by Anna Luther
May 24, 2006 — Published in Accounts & Glimpses
I sank into the living room couch dumbfounded and broken-hearted, my youth orchestra rejection letter in hand. “Sometimes it’s not about you,” was the only advice my would-have-been conductor could offer. Like that made any sense. How could being rejected not be about me? I had worked my fifteen-year-old fingers off; I had a new flute, new teacher, and new practice ethic. I was so a better player than those other girls! I played freakin’ Handel. Handel! As a fifteen-year-old! I played some stupid sonata the year before that. The Handel must have been 300 times better. Improvements like that should have landed me first chair! I had played in the bloody ensemble the year before! The lady who had taken my audition registration even said, “See you at rehearsal Saturday,” before I walked into the band room.
No, it couldn’t be! There must have been some mistake. I was amazing! I must have gotten the wrong card.
It didn’t matter. There were four flutists who had played better than I did. It wasn’t about me. As I began to learn that day, it never really is about me — or anyone else for that matter.
What I lack is another’s strength
In the human body, the hands and the ears and the eyes and the feet rely on one another. No member is at liberty to ignore any other member because, while each must fulfill its own task in order for the others to be successful in theirs, each also depends on the other in order to accomplish that task. Your brain is the reason you are sitting here, understanding this sentence — but it couldn’t function without the heart pumping blood to it. The heart would be futile without the lungs exchanging waste gas for oxygen. The lungs couldn’t perform their vital exchange without the nasal passages working correctly. And on it goes.
Catherine of Siena, fourteenth century theologian, argued that it can’t possibly be about one person because God purposefully split up different gifts among humanity. Human beings are by nature social creatures; if we didn’t have a concrete and specific need for another human being, it would become entirely too easy to mutate into self-focused hermits who shun their fellow man. Instead, not being independent, people necessarily need to cooperate if they want to be effective in any sort of useful capacity. God split up different gifts among people so that nothing would ever be about just one person.
I may not particularly be thrilled with needing to rely on my lab partner’s skill with calculators in my mandatory Science for Dummies class, but I lack the dexterity and mathematical intuition that she possesses. I don’t like needing to rely on someone else, but I can’t deny that without her help, my equations would be processed at the speed of a cat snoozing in the sun. I don’t enjoy the fact that I can’t move my clunky bedroom desk without assistance, but it’s a reality I have to deal with. I have to accept that I have limitations and learn to ask for help without being bitter that I need help in the first place. My lack is another’s strength.
You can’t do it on your own, nobody can
Too proud to ask for help, a close friend of mine struggled with depression for half of her college career. We’ll call her “Lisa.” She didn’t want to admit she had a problem — she could just pretend she didn’t need help, that she could work through it on her own. As long as Lisa wouldn’t ask for help, wouldn’t admit that on her own she couldn’t save herself from the darkness that held her, she could pretend that she didn’t have a problem. Never mind that her disease would consume her; at least her pride would remain intact. At least she was independent, in control of things. Isn’t that what makes us happy?
In her pride, Lisa refused to admit that anything was wrong she couldn’t fix on her own; she didn’t need someone else to help her. She refused to see that she was being consumed by her disease — a disease that could have been quickly and effectively treated simply by being humble enough to ask for help. Lisa didn’t care. She was determined to remain independent, even at the expense of her well-being.
It wasn’t until Lisa’s depression lifted for a few days of its own accord that she realized what she really had been missing those years she was stifled by depression. Not wanting to succumb to her disease again, she finally sought help. She had seen the light and didn’t want to go back to the darkness. She couldn’t be the island that seemed so safe from the world full of trials and tribulations; that had only left her struggling miserably with even mundane tasks. She had to seek others. Lisa had to sacrifice her complete independence in the name of getting treatment. In other words, Lisa learned that it wasn’t all about her: that she couldn’t heal herself without the help of other people, and that if she wanted to begin to heal, she needed to lean on the strength and knowledge of others. It wasn’t all about what she was doing or about anything else, except that she needed other people.
We’re in this together
In the end, it really can’t be all about me — or you — ever. You, your secretary overwhelmed with stacks of paper, your best friend’s bridesmaid nervous about the wedding, the homeless man with the cardboard sign on 7th and Pennsylvania, your weekend-ruining boss — we’re not isolated on this planet. As a professor put it to me when we were rubbing elbows in my music department’s technology lab the size of a small walk-in bedroom closet, “You’re not in the way: we just both happen to be in this space at the same time.” We’re not roadblocks for each other; we’re those orange blinking signs that point the way. It’s not about you. It’s not about me. Life is about all of us — together.
Illustration by Anatole Upart.
Anna Luther
Anna Luther is an obsessive musician-writer whose days are split between pondering the finer points of Bach and flogging verbose writers.
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