Other New Year's Resolutions

Both James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code and Michael Meade’s The Genius Myth are profound books that give language to an old intuition I’ve long had. That we are not born an empty tabula rasa, but are accompanied by a daemon, a genius (Roman and Greek words for the same idea), that carries our destiny. A kind of soul’s code that speaks in hints and whispers and dreams and beckoning fingers and invites us to claim it. 

 

In the same way that the blueprint for the oak is fully present in the acorn, so is our life shaped by this particular way we are meant to be. Each one of us carries such a code and each one is unique and unlike any other. Our life’s work is attend to its message and follow it down the roads we are meant to walk. Sounds simple, but in fact, the imagination, mindfulness and courage it takes to be wholly ourselves in a world that is doing its damnest to mold us into everybody else is one of the hardest things we can do. 

 

I’m working on the third draft of a new book about a trip my wife and I took around the world in 1978-79 and am particularly struck by the New Year’s resolutions I wrote in my journal as the year turned to 1979. The first one was particular to the time, but the rest echoed far into the future life I led:

 

• Not to leave Asia before satisfying my original vision of the trip and answering my questions. 

 

• To work at making each day come fully alive, with great love for all people and places.

 

• To work hard in my studies.

 

• To put together a book of my particular blend of Orff. 

 

• To do as many workshops as possible when I return.

 

• To perform music in a public place (other than Goat Hill Pizza!).

 

• To put some effort into friendships, especially with men.

 

• To improve my teaching with kids.

 

• To maintain a live relationship with Karen and continue to grow together.

 

Isn’t the interesting? A lifetime of workshops, 11 books, 36 years in a Men’s Group, still teaching kids and still trying to do it better, jazz piano performance at SF Jazz, Freight and Salvage, Flower Piano and more, still married to Karen, still working on gratitude, love and forgiveness—it was all there, ready to come to life. I wrote this as a young 27-year-old sapling now grown almost 50 years later in a large, spreading oak. 

 

And there was more. In a later entry, I tried to define my vision of music education. I had only taught for three years at the school when I wrote this, but again, it wholly captured what I did in the 42 more years of teaching there and the six years since I retired (but continue to teach). 

 

1) To teach music effectively, coherently and joyfully in a primary oral tradition working through the body and voice.

 

2) To cultivate one’s own expression from the foundation of the world’s music, cultivating a personal voice in appreciation of each peoples’ voice. 

 

Perfect descriptions of my recent Level III Orff training. 

 

Finally, I stumbled upon this sentence, so relevant to the recent posts about “class management.”

 

Responding to the people I meet here in India is like the lessons I’ve learned as a teacher at school, learning to flow with people’s energy rather than be annoyed by it or try to control it. 

 

I don’t know if anyone still keeps journals these days, but I highly recommend it as a way to reveal one’s particular genius and marvel at the pattern when you re-read them. I still feel my roots sinking deeper and branches spreading wider and give thanks to the patience of my daemon. May the tree I’ve become offer shade, give oxygen and be filled with birds singing on the branches. 

PS I might have also written: 

Continue to keep a journal. 

And that I've done, for 54 years. And having recently announced my 5,000th public Blogpost, this entry marks another milestone— now over 4 million read. Whoopee!