No Regrets

In an upcoming interview put together by an Orff book dealer, this intriguing question came up: 

 

“As a seasoned teacher, what would you tell your younger self now?”

 

My initial response: 

 

“You’re on the right track! Keep experimenting as you are, keep studying a variety of musical styles and instruments, keep noticing what makes children happy and what doesn’t connect with them and adjusting your teaching accordingly. I can testify almost a half century later that all your intuitions were correct and I have the testimony from hundreds of children to prove it. So carry on, young lad!”

 

Of course, I could have suggested actually doing some of the things I always thought I should do: Take lessons on drum set, sing in a choir, actually learn how to play that Bulgarian bagpipe better. Maybe a Kodaly or Dalcroze training. Don’t wait until I’m 60 to play in a jazz band. And so on. But hey, there’s only so many hours in a day and if I did any or all of that, something else would have had to give. 

 

But all in all I realized that the life I lived and the teaching I did and the thoughts about teaching I thought were exactly what was right for me and all necessary to how it turned out. No regrets. 

 

And the same could be said of my life in general. Of course, there were a thousand things I could have done better and things I could wish I hadn’t done or said. But again, I believe they all were necessary to everything good and true that happened. The only regret worth having would have been to refuse to take a risk, to have said no to something because I was worried it would be too hard or I might not do it well or others would have criticized it. 

 

If I am to claim any success in my life, it would be my commitment to saying yes to everything that felt true to my vision of what is important. The putting myself out there in many places I wasn’t necessarily wholly ready for at the time— the Orff workshop, the jazz stage, the book published, the Keynote speech, the Flower Piano Concert this Sunday, etc.—simply because it felt necessary to the way I am put together, a beckoning finger from my Daimon/ inner guide that brought me one step closer to merging the person I was born to be with whoever I was at the moment. 

 

And so, younger self, you did precisely what you had to do and older self, there is more ahead. No regrets.