What's Wrong With Mi

In teaching my class today about drones accompanying different pentatonic modes, I noted that in C pentatonic, Do and Sol are the drone notes, but in the Re mode it’s Re and La. When I moved up one note, I asked “What’s wrong with Mi?” One beat later, I had the presence of mind to say “Don’t answer that!!” as I could see the students mentally preparing their list of my many flaws. Ha ha!

 

It became a standing joke of the day, that substitution of Me for Mi and to be honest, my most truthful answer would be “Everything. And nothing.” In other words, short of the extremes of drug addiction, murder, hate speech and the like, I’ve made the usual mistakes we human beings customarily make. Not loving enough, loving the wrong thing or person too much, backing down when I should have spoken up, speaking up when I should have backed down, the usual childhood mischief, too much self-doubt, too much unwarranted self-confidence— shall I go on?

 

At the same time, all of it was necessary to the life that chose me to live it, all of it led me to do the work I’ve done that I occasionally got right and not only felt uplifted myself, but almost inadvertently helped someone else by seeing their promise or listening to their hurt and just letting them know even without words that I loved being in their presence when they needed that kind of assurance. One of the great gifts of aging gracefully is realizing that you are precisely who you are and that it’s beautiful and necessary, flaws and all. To forgive yourself and in so doing, start down that long difficult path of forgiving others and helping them to forgive themselves.

 

While my Orff colleagues and I crow from the rooftops the healing nature of this work where everyone feels blessed and emerges stronger and surer, on some level, we’re kidding ourselves. Maybe some or even most do, but not before they hit many walls and find themselves on the ground of excruciating self-doubt. A few people in the past two courses have courageously confessed their sense of suffering from imposter syndrome and let me know about that “not good enough!” voice constantly shouting in their ears. I assure them that I also have that voice (don’t we all?) and it came out last night when a student took over from me playing piano at the jam session and was killin’ it! “Damn!” I thought. “Why can’t I play like that?”

“Compare and despair” is an appropriate mantra to invoke when the voice raises the volume. Of course, hitting the walls of our limits is an important part of what motivates us to keep pushing against that solid wood until we find a crack. What’s important is a foundation of unconditional love, the kind Mr. Rogers promised us when he said “I like you just the way you are.”

 

The Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi said something similar: “You are perfect as you are.” And then added, “But we could all stand a little improvement.”

 

And so the conversation between the everything that’s wrong with me, with you, with all of us and the nothing, the hard-earned understanding that our sometimes needed and sometimes destructive self-doubts should lead to self-acceptance, self- forgiveness and the self-blessing we all deserve. We all indeed are perfect as we're meant to be and we all could stand a little improvement.

 

PS In case you’re wondering, there is no conventional drone in Mi pentatonic because there is no 5^th. That’s what’s wrong with Mi!