Five Word Mantra

And so my 72^nd birthday came and went. I spent most of it teaching these 27 beautiful souls and running out of adjectives to properly describe the splendor of it all. Without any paperwork or immigration officers, we traveled to Bulgaria, Hungary, Azerbhaijan, Renaissance Europe, China, Lithuania and unlocked yet further faculties of our soul through the beneficent genius of musical cultures present in us all. Each gifted freely to us without any fuss about cultural appropriation, because they all are co-present in each and every one of us and properly approached, remind us that we are all vehicles of a shared consciousness. 

 

At lunch that day, we took our annual group photo that usually grouped us by country with each holding up paper versions of flags, but decided that such flags represented a divisive message— things like the tension between Catalonia and Spain, California and Florida, Turkey and Armenia. So instead opted for a big sheet of paper with the word “Welcome” in all the different languages represented in our gathering. That felt better.

 

Off with the faculty that night for our annual dinner out and movie. I was hoping for “Barbie” but both the movie times and the group energy leaned more towards “Indiana Jones.” It was pretty much what we expected, somewhat “fun,” but the 25 minutes of coming attractions of horrendous bam/bam/ explode/ monster/ panic/fear crap was truly dispiriting and hard to sit through. I had some naïve notion that Hollywood would stop making these after the pandemic, understanding we needed a break from feeding our brain stems and profiting by targeting our fears. What was I thinking? The sheer volume of human resources, both our work, our thinking, our imagination, our money to pump out this garbage, is mind-boggling. Aaaarggh!!!

 

Meanwhile, I felt the likes and loves from the usual assortment of folks in my life— people from high school, college, my old school community, a few performing musicians, neighbors, family, of course and large group of Orff colleagues and students I’ve trained around the country and around the world. Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, phone texts, e-mails, a few actual phone calls and the live greetings of the 100 or so teachers gathered here. The sense of being appreciated for having been born was present and welcomed.

 

And by me as well! For the moment, I’m blessed with good health, an alert and still ever-probing mind, a feeling heart, a sense of passion and purpose, the surprising feeling of being at the top of my game in teaching, writing and piano playing with both the possibility of and determination to continue the upward ascent to a larger view. My hearing keeps diminishing (though the hearing aids I’m resisting will certainly help with that) and there are some disturbing features in the mirror, but hey, I’m not on the market for attracting romance with my good looks, so why care? At the end of the day (which was actually 2am when I finally got home), my feelings about the whole thing can be succinctly summed up in the title of an interested airplane movie I once saw, a useful 5-word mantra.

 

Happy. Thank you. More please.