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I was also reminded of the unique power of music to bring people together. In terms of demographics, there is seemingly little in common between my family – a nuclear unit of four created by my Taiwanese immigrant parents, plus a scattered array of my aunts, uncles, and cousins in similar nuclear units throughout the Midwest and East Coast – and the multi-generational Minnesota-native family of my brother’s wife. Every Christmas we gather at my brother’s house and it has been an interesting evolution over the past decade. At first, my sister-in-law tried to juggle both sets of traditions by essentially cooking two whole meals – one Chinese and one American – for the gathering of sixteen or so people. This put her in the kitchen – along with most of us – for most of the day. While the overstuffed table looked a lot like the familiar scenes from my brother’s and my childhoods (where having twelve or more dishes was commonplace at holiday meals), it did not have the same resonance or nostalgia for my sister-in-law’s family. When my niece Chloe was born, things started to shift toward more pragmatic concerns – like having enough time to enjoy the company, bake cookies, and wrap presents, rather than spending the day in the kitchen.

So we have let go of the Chinese part of the festivities. The only reflection of being Chinese – or any memory of our childhoods – is the fact that the four of us are seated at the same table. Salt and pepper and sticks of butter have replaced soy sauce and chili oil. Mashed potatoes (delicious!) have replaced rice and two kinds of stir-fried noodles. And a single main dish – a grand, standing prime rib roast – has taken center stage instead of the myriad braised, stir-fried, steamed, marinated, and roasted creations that constituted the vaudevillian array of foods of our childhood.

It still feels foreign to me. I look around and I know that this scene brings back warm and fond memories for the people around me, but I strain to feel the same warmth because it doesn’t contain any nostalgic value for me. I have to see beyond the actual elements and look at the meaning behind the gestures. I have to train myself to do this, even though I do know it somewhere deep in my heart.

This year I promised myself that I would try to bring my real self to the table, instead of staying small and silent and as out of the way as possible. I know from recent experience that I have warmth and light and joy and enthusiasm to offer, even to complete strangers. Sometimes it is transmitted in words, sometimes in the way I listen, and almost always through an offering of music. My brother never had a real piano in his house until this year. In years past I had brought my violin and played a few things, but always felt it was a little too showy, begging people to “look at me!” when in fact this felt more like a communal gathering rather than a place to put on a solo performance. I never felt quite right about asking people to sit and listen attentively to me play my violin for them. Plus, with carry-on luggage limits as they are, my violin has not made the trip to Minneapolis in quite some time.

This year, something inspired me to toss in a pile of my old piano books containing pop songs, Christmas carols, and a few “easy listening” favorites that I thought might appeal to the occasion. I didn’t know whether or when I would use them.

As it turns out, our after-dinner gathering around the piano to sing Christmas carols was one of the highlights of the evening. My family does not sing, by the way. This was something I always forced my younger cousins to do every year on Christmas Eve at my house. Every year my production would become more and more elaborate, requiring earlier and earlier arrival times in order to rehearse the group. I even started typing out lyrics and sending them in advance so they could learn the songs. I would sit at the piano and play, and they would sing and act out the parts, change costumes, do choreography.

This year the singing started more organically, with a couple of people sitting to listen while I goofed around at the piano. I can’t remember how we got started with the Christmas carols, or who started singing first. But as soon as the others heard, they came rushing from across the house to join us. Soon there was a large group huddled around the darkened corner of the dining room, all craning their necks to read the lyrics over my shoulder as I sat playing the piano.

The music brought back something familiar to me, but also something familiar to this family who grew up seemingly worlds away from me. The sounds of the music – and the collective experience of making it together – brought us together without need for explanation. Three generations of a family stood around that piano, singing as I played. My own family watched, with what I imagine was both awe and pride that I had an access point to communicate and build bridges among people of all backgrounds. I listened, in sheer gratitude for the beauty of the voices around me. I knew what an offering it was to sing out loud, to give voice to something. Some knew all the words to many verses by heart; others were harmonizing as if by second nature. Several verses were even sung in German.

Each of us held different memories and nostalgia woven into the songs, but these united in one sound. It was a beautiful moment of togetherness that arose from the sheer power of music.

Here’s a short excerpt we captured on video:

In closing, here’s a different yet equally powerful moment of music, when my niece agreed to help me play one of her piano songs (“Up On the Housetop”) and earn a candy star just like she did.

This joy, this enthusiasm, this gratitude, this awe – this is what I have, and what I wish to offer of myself in this life.

My iPod was playing, but it just ran down to the last song on a playlist, so I’m left in the supposed silence.

Only instead of silence, I hear, coming from the violin studio next door to my office (we share a wall), shouting. Shouting interspersed with the sounds of a violin, but mostly shouting. That’s what makes the walls resonate.

It’s so loud, so profoundly disturbing, that I can no longer keep working on the accounting (which, I admit, is a tough one to hold my attention these days). When the music in my little office stopped, I was left to face the reality of the environment I am in.

To me, the shouting is a reminder of everything I am not, and wish not to become.

It is also a reminder that I am not a “violin teacher” nor do I wish to be called one.

It is a gift. When I moved into this studio last summer, after looking for more than six months for the perfect space in which to house the next stage for The Music Within Us, I promptly found out within the first week that “another violin teacher” would be renting the space next door.My first interactions with my neighbor set the tone of distaste. I’m glad I have met him, so I can put a face to the shouting voice I hear from the other side of the wall right now. “Passion” is not the word that comes to mind. “Intensity” maybe. Anger more likely. I can’t help but marvel at the fact that so many people sign up to get yelled at.

But I also know that to get to the pinnacle of “competitive violin” or “competitive anything”, most people need some yelling. We need to push ourselves beyond where we think we can’t go. To do the thing we think we cannot do.

The shouting – as the student continues playing – makes it sound a bit like an athletic event, like a basketball game with the coach pacing the sidelines and using cupped hands to call plays or encourage players. Well, sitting here and hearing the familiar sounds of Kreisler’s “Praeludium and Allegro”, interspersed with the booming of the teacher’s voice, I am reminded that I am not here to yell at anyone. It’s not how I wish to use my voice in this life. It may mean that I never witness “competitive” violinists emerging from my guidance. I have learned to be more than okay with that. The question remains whether there will be a place for my art as it is now being expressed. I am willing – no, very curious and excited – to ask that question.

Before I turn on my iPod again this occurs to me: I never thought that the wall I had put up – part of my pre-lease negotiations for this space – would in fact create a violin studio. Only not on my side of the wall.

Music Improvisation for Everyone

Discover the music within you!

This class is designed for ALL LEVELS and ALL AGES.

• Are you a “recovering” classically trained musician, looking to rediscover the joy in your playing?
• Are you a new parent looking for simple ways to enjoy music with your child?
• Do you consider yourself “tone deaf”?
• Do you like listening to music, but have never considered yourself to be “musical”?

This introductory class is for YOU!

You will…

• Discover new ways of listening
• Explore new possibilities in your self-expression
• Notice the rhythm and “groove” in everyday sounds
• Break down your preconceptions about music
• Understand more deeply what makes certain music “work” for you
• Have fun in a nurturing environment

When: Saturday, December 19, 2009, 1:30PM – 3:00PM

Where: The Music Within Us studio

2483 Old Middlefield Way, Suite 150, Mountain View, CA 94043

Cost: $15/single, $25/pair (purchased at the same time), children 17 and under FREE (must be accompanied by an adult)

To register for this class, click here.

Please join us for TWO performances on Saturday, December 5, 2009, at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto.

1:00PM – Outside Nieman Marcus Clock Tower Plaza

3:00PM – Inside Bloomingdales in the Children’s Department, 2nd floor

Twenty young violinists, ages 4 to 10, will perform classical and holiday music selections.

Note: 10% of your purchases at Bloomingdales will be donated to the charitable organization, Sacred Heart Oakwood retirement community in Atherton. Please request a duplicate receipt at the time of your purchase and submit it in the Children’s Department.

From the age of three, I always studied both piano and violin in parallel, taking for granted that so much of my childhood universe was spent in a state of deep listening to sound and music. Several weeks ago I began a year-long immersion course in the use of sound, voice, and music in healing. I can’t begin to describe it fully in words, but it has opened me up to the direct experience of sound through listening. I realize that so much of what we call “listening” is not that at all. It’s deciphering and decoding, labeling or waiting to talk, enduring, or filtering, or manipulating.

But listening is actually a process of going inward, to the deep place of silence within each of us. When we have truly listened, we have internalized something from what we have heard. If we have truly listened, then we will have felt the effect of sound throughout our entire being.

When we go to a concert, we are not “listening” any more than we “listen” to a movie at the theater. Concerts are a display of human competence, and if we’re lucky, we might walk out feeling some  emotional effect other than the ringing in our ears. But that effect depends on so much beyond the sound. We’re bombarded with images, lighting, rituals that are specific to the concert venue, and then the language of the musical style presented. Classical music is becoming so distant from our cultural mainstream that most people feel they need to learn how to listen to it. There’s some truth to this, which has led to a much-needed trend of classical performers’ addressing audiences using words, before or after their concerts. Not only does this lend a humanity to the people “doing” the music, but it provides the listeners with a bridge toward understanding what they are hearing.

As my experience of listening and sound evolves over the year, I will undoubtedly have more to share about what I learn.

But now back to that moment from teaching today. Sharing it will explain something quirky about what makes me happy, which may be more help to me than any of you reading this. I saw the human mind and body at work today. I saw memory developing right before my eyes today. I saw the power of concentration and deep listening in the development of true understanding of the self. I get to SEE that as part of my job!! I get to help it along. I won’t say that I “make it happen”, because I don’t. I facilitate it by cultivating the rituals and mindset that create the conditions for it to happen. But I can’t make it happen. Believe me, I’ve tried. And failed. I’ve seen parents try to make it happen too. Some think they have succeeded, by the external measures they’ve defined for themselves to measure success. But the only results I really care about are the ones earned the “old-fashioned way”…by putting your mind to it!

And today I saw that unfold right in my studio. I was teaching 7-year-old Audrey, whose journey has been defined by slow, quiet progress, always a few steps behind her twin brother who started studying six months before her. I knew she (and her parents) had the “right stuff” when she struggled and persisted through several months of practice before being able to clap the first rhythm, “Mississippi Hot Dog”. It took every ounce of her concentration – and her own sense of humor about making mistakes – to experience that first moment of triumph almost three years ago. And everything she has learned has pretty much been that same path of struggle coupled with good humor and steady determination, with nothing coming “naturally” to her.

I’m absolutely fascinated with students like Audrey, and I don’t know why. The only memory I can draw upon is my very consistent tendency, which started in childhood and continues to this day, to cry – literally bawl – whenever I watch the IronMan Triathlon on television. Not when the winners would cross the finish line, but when the last few guys – the ones wearing green glowsticks around their necks, barely hobbling on one leg, or pushing a son with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair, or crawling across on hands and knees at age eighty-five – would cross just before the midnight deadline. To them, it was obviously not about winning. It was about having the courage to START, and then the determination to FINISH. Their dignity was not in how they looked crossing the finish line – and some of them did NOT look pretty with various bodily fluids running down their legs – but that they had the resolve to finish. It was their own race, and no one else’s.

Audrey had one of those crossings of the finish line in her lesson today. The girl for whom every little thing was earned through effort from the start managed to play a two-line run of scale patterns in a Bach piece with command and confidence that took me by surprise. After doing several drills with her on one measure where she was struggling to hold her third finger down while she moved her second finger from the A to E string, I saw that she had a solid connection between her mind and her fingers. I said, “Do you think you have it memorized?” She said, “No I don’t think so.” I said, “Try it. Look at your fingers, not the music, and see if you can do it.” I knew from the way her fingers moved that she would be able to do it, and I just wanted her to see for herself. When she did it, that little smile that cracked her lips open just enough to see all of her front teeth, and the little sideways glance of her eyes to look at her dad, mirrored everything I was also experiencing in that moment: “I’m so happy! And, did you see that, Dad?” No bigger celebration than that was necessary.

Sometimes that is all we need. Just a little moment of joy, of pride, of knowing what we can accomplish with our own two hands and our mind. And then a witness who’s there to share it with us.

It was a simple, beautiful moment. Almost too simple to describe to another. But it was a good reminder of how simple happiness can really be.

That’s what this brilliant ad from lululemon athletica asks us:

It shows a yoga class in session, with a room full of people facing us and seated with crossed legs on yoga mats, hands in front of their hearts in prayer position. Everyone is meticulously dressed in lululemon-brand yoga gear, and all their spines look straight. They are all young, fit, and active. The woman in the foreground has a perfect pose also, except only one of her hands is held in prayer position, while her other hand holds a Blackberry up to her left ear. Her gaze is downward and off to her right side and she is smiling.

Other details that are done artfully in this ad are the facial expressions of each person in the class. The people seated around this woman display an array of emotions. One woman, in the back row, has her head slightly askance and one eyebrow raised, as if to say, “Is she SERIOUS?”.  The woman next to her turns her head to look at the Blackberry holder with an intent gaze and pursed lips, displaying a mixture of pity and mild disbelief, as if she were trying to wish away the situation in front of her eyes. A man in the back of the class has furrowed brows, and another man on the opposite side of the “protagonist” wears the incredulous, raised-eyebrow look of the woman in the back row. The person on the phone is blissfully unaware of her effect on the people around her. In fact, she possesses all the outward accoutrements of a loyal devotee to yoga – after all, it’s printed on her eco-friendly water bottle: “I heart yoga”.

It’s thought provoking, isn’t it?

I asked three different groups of my violin students (ages 3 and up) to look at this picture today, and tell me what they saw. “They’re doing gymnastics,” said 4-year-old Jack. “I see a person talking on the phone,” said 4-year-old William. “The woman with the green top has the same color mat as her shirt,” observed 10-year-old Greer. “There is a water bottle that says, I love…something,” offered 5-year-old Ella. “Maybe it says ‘I love yogurt’,” added her father. “I see windows,” said 6-year-old Sarah.

As we shared what we saw, even if we didn’t know what “yoga” is, we could deduce that these people – all dressed similarly and assuming a similar posture – were gathered to do something together, in an enclosed space (indicated by the windows). All of the children agreed that this might be a class. One person guessed that the woman in front was the teacher. I said, “What if she is the teacher?” “No, she’s not the leader,” said 5-year-old Nina. “How do you know that?” I asked. “Because she is sitting with her back to the class,” said Ella. “That’s true, it’s hard to teach if you’re not facing the class. But what if she is the teacher? Are the students following her?”

“Who in this picture is learning?” I asked.

“Nobody,” said 8-year-old Isabela in a quiet voice.

“Great answer! Why is nobody learning?” I continued.

“Because they’re all looking at the woman talking on the phone,” she said with a smile, as if that should be obvious.

What a joy it was to see all the possibilities observed in this picture from the perspective of these fresh eyes and young minds!

To me, the picture asks us to consider the areas in our life where we think we are “showing up” and “doing all the right things”, but in reality, we are undermining our own intentions. What we look like, what we have, where spend our time, may serve as comforting symbols of our devotion to some professed higher purpose, but unless we commit to the actual practice of our intention, we aren’t living up to our promise to ourselves. And, the ad further reminds us, this lack of awareness has an effect on the people around us. They see what we are doing, even if we may remain, quite blissfully, unaware of it.

This is also an opportunity to ask, who suffers more? The person talking on the Blackberry or the people around her? And who do we identify more with – the “other” people in the class, or the person front and center? How do we feel toward each person in this photo?

I noticed another layer of meaning emerge as I looked for a longer period of time. By centering the portrait on the woman who is on the phone, the photographer places her at the center of our attention, forcing us to look at her and confront all the different ways we may relate to her. The picture also asks us to consider her with kindness and compassion. We may at first feel “superior” or “righteous” or “annoyed”, which may be reflected in the expressions of some of the others in the photo. But is it really true that we’ve never been that woman on the phone? Have we never tried to do two (or more) things at the same time, and ended up shortchanging both experiences? Have we never professed our love and devotion to something, and then given less than our full effort to it? Have we never bought all the right accessories, taken up a new hobby or sport, and found ourselves unable to engage?

It’s rare that advertising gets me thinking on all these levels. I’ve actually never been able to find anything I’d like to wear at lululemon, despite my devotion to yoga practice. The ad won’t change that. I love their manifesto, and the story of their company’s founder is inspiring.

But this ad reached the level of artwork for me. I hope it got you thinking too.

I had two different piano teachers in my life. Both of them are now deceased. Mr. Leviton started me at age 3 and took me through age 13 or so. And then the last three years of high school I moved on to Dr. Isaak, at Northwestern University. He was the one who thought I was absolutely NUTS for not continuing to study music in college. He said I was already at the level of a typical Master’s Degree student at Northwestern! I simply ignored this, or dismissed it as the rantings of someone as lunatic as you must need to be in order to become a professor of piano.

In retrospect, I missed out on some great learning by not being open to him at the time. He was someone who was absolutely IN LOVE with all things piano. He was known for his undergraduate survey course, “Piano Repertoire”, in which he would cover the entirety of piano literature over the course of the school year. I sat in on one of his lectures when I visited Northwestern as a high school senior – the university’s overnight, “sell themselves” pitch weekend for prospective incoming freshmen. The class was held in a small room within the Victorian style building that housed the School of Music. It was designed for maybe 20 people maximum. There was a Steinway in the room, where he was seated. And there were about 40 to 50 people cramped in all corners of that room, sitting on the windowsill, on the floor, even standing. He had a stack of piano music on one side of the music stand and he just flipped through each of them, bringing them up in front of him as he talked, playing excerpts from certain pieces, telling stories, all at a rapid-fire pace. It was like watching a grandfather flip through photo albums of his family, filled with love, joy, memories, admiration, pride. And there we were, the students, wide-eyed, trying to take something in from all of this stream of consciousness and knowledge imbibed over a career of studying, teaching, playing. No one could take notes. It was just too fast! There was no textbook, it was just the entire oeuvre of piano literature. I don’t know what the exam for that class must have been like. I’m just glad I didn’t have to take it. But I am sorry I didn’t get to sit through the entire year of lectures.

Last night I sat down and took out my Dover edition of Volume One of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas (there are two volumes, each about 200 pages). I remember the dark black sky of the painting on the cover of the book. The oversized pages. Dover (the publisher) always chose beautiful, classical paintings that matched the era of whatever music was in each of its volumes. There’s an Impressionist painting on the cover of the Debussy Preludes, and a Romantic painting – one with a full moon over a landscape – on the cover of the Beethoven sonatas.

I turned to the piece I performed in its entirety as part of my senior recital – the Op. 2, No. 3, in C major. Allegro con brio is the tempo indication for the first movement. I tried the first phrase. To my astonishment my right hand could still do those thirds! I remember having such a hard time with them even when I performed the piece, never getting my 3rd and 4th finger to do quite what I wanted them to. But tonight they just did it. Was it the result of not thinking so much? I didn’t care why, I just kept playing it over and over again, incredulous, wanting to prove to myself that this apparent success-without-practice was just a fluke.

That first page is marked with Dr. Isaak’s characteristic narrow, tall cursive handwriting. “With vigor”, he translates above the tempo indication. “2 styles: 1. singing, 2. brillante” reads another corner. “Fun” he has in red colored pencil. He had a way of making me choose words to capture the mood or approach to a piece that really annoyed me at the time. I was an ornery 16-year-old high school senior who just wanted to move on to the “real” experience that was awaiting me in the free adult world. I clammed up at his attempts to get me to describe how I felt about the music, or what the words he chose meant to me. I had a terrible attitude toward learning. I must have been a nightmare for him to teach, especially during that last year. I remember my parents’ attempts to converse with me about my sullen moods and silent treatment of my teacher during the lessons. Those conversations didn’t go very far. I still don’t fully understand what was eating me at the time.

But as I played through every single page of that 30-page Sonata last night, I felt the gift of being in the presence of genius. Of being able to touch it. Of getting a little closer to it than the average person who never played a Beethoven piano sonata, much less studied it with a professor of piano who could work himself into a tearful soliloquy on just what a great, great man Beethoven was. This happened, actually, at one of my lessons, and my dad and I both felt very awkward at being present at such a personal, emotionally poignant moment for Dr. Isaak. We obviously did not know how great a man Beethoven really was. We would have to settle for just feeling the sense of loss for not being as close to Beethoven as Dr. Isaak felt himself to be.

The closest I got – which I now appreciate as being a lot closer than most people in the world ever get – to Beethoven’s greatness was studying those sonatas. Not just figuring out how to get through them once. But practicing, studying, memorizing, and then performing one in its entirety. It’s a different level of mastery, to live with something like that, for over a year, and then give it all you’ve got in front of an audience. The thing I didn’t realize even at the time of that performance – held in the small, low-ceilinged living room of Don and Bea Isaak’s South Barrington (Honey Lake) home – was that it would stay with me for this long.

I felt that I was visiting an old friend as I played that sonata last night. It wasn’t just Beethoven. It was my teacher, Dr. Isaak. Seeing his markings in the music while sitting at the keyboard brought me right back to his small studio on the second floor of the School of Music, with two Steinway grand pianos, side by side. On his wall, among many photos of himself with other musicians, was a sign that said, “Work smarter, not harder.” Sitting on the floor nearby was a large barbell with fifteen pound weights on each end. He would sit perched on a tall director’s chair to my right, or, when he wanted to demonstrate, at the bench of the second piano to my left. My dad, who usually drove me to those lessons, could be found lightly snoozing in the antique upholstered chair in the corner.

Things that I didn’t even know were still stored in my arms, fingers, and body just flowed. It’s not that I was able to actually play the piece at the level of the performance I gave so many years ago. But I felt pangs of memory at various points in my playing, things that had been embedded there from the struggle, the study, the repetition, the closeness you achieve when you have the urge to understand something. Those sixteenth note ascending arpeggios and broken octaves on the first page, punctuated by grand chords in the left hand, showed me two things: there is nothing like the grand sonority of a big chord played on the piano, especially a Beethoven chord; and, piano playing really is an athletic activity. My breath and pulse quickened as I played over that passage a few times, not only because of the excitement and “vigor” of the music but the sheer physicality of moving at that pace and for those distances across the keyboard. My hand, unaccustomed to the stretch of an octave, especially after years of computer mouse training, felt sore from the new demands I placed on it.

Not having anyone to please, I also listened with enjoyment to myself. I enveloped myself in the sounds – some of which may have inched toward what Beethoven intended, but most of which were crude approximations, approaching meaning in the way that a baby’s babbling speaks to us without our fully understanding its meaning. It was healing in a way that I imagine all acts of memory to be. When we relax into a memory, and allow our bodies to experience it, we can accept who we were and who we are more fully.

I was filled with such gratitude for so many gifts I had been given in my life – the opportunity to practice and study over a continuous period of time so that I gained skills; the opportunity to learn from a passionate piano scholar who tried to share his love of music with me; and the opportunity last night to sit at my own piano, in my own studio, and just play for fun. To make a visit to an old friend like Beethoven – to count him among the friends I now have the ability to revisit – is something I know is the result of many, many people investing many, many hours, over many, many years in me.

I am reminded of this quote, which my mom used to say as one of her stock “old Chinese sayings” when we were growing up, and which I recently saw on a walk through San Francisco:

“When you drink water, think of its source.”

To me, right now, it means, to remember and feel gratitude for the many generations who have led me to this moment in this life, when I get to sip the healing water of my own memories.

In northern California, they say there are two seasons – brown and green. Summer is brown and winter is green. This refers to the dryness of our summer months, when the foothills around the Bay turn wheat-colored and stay that way until the rain comes in January and February.

I visited Napa Valley earlier this month – one of the brown ones – inspired by the visit of my violin teacher who has known me since I was four years old. We went on the guided tour of Robert Mondavi Winery. As we stood in the 85-degree sun of the vineyard, my teacher asked our tour guide how often the irrigation pipes were used to water the plants. We all assumed that there was an elaborate watering system to maintain such lush green leaves on the vines surrounding us.

We were wrong.

The tour guide explained that the vines are deliberately stressed, and not given supplemental water during the dry season, because the growers have found that the more the vine struggles, the deeper its roots must go, and the more complex flavor is produced in the grapes, resulting in better wine. So prized are those roots that often the heartiest of the “rootstocks” (as they are called) are grafted onto newer fruit-bearing branches, to help enhance the hardiness of a harvest.

It surprised us all to hear this, especially as we strode into the dusty soil that supported the growth of endless rows of green-leafed grapevines. Who would have thought that good grape cultivation actually meant withholding water from the vines?

We were invited to taste some of the grapes. I braced myself to wince at the sourness. But they tasted amazingly good! I and the rest of the tour group each helped ourselves to a small handful of grapes before moving onto the fermentation room.

That story about the most resilient – and resourceful – vines producing the most complex and therefore valuable grapes stayed with me. I thought about it again today as I took a hike in the dry landscape of an open space preserve near my home, walking on dusty trails and surrounded by waist-high prairie grasses that were the color of straw. I noticed a tree, living there in the same parched landscape, somehow managing to have all of its branches teeming with blooms of bright green, shiny leaves. This was one thriving tree in the midst of a whole lot of dried out deadness.

Somehow, I thought, that tree must have dug deeper with its roots to find the water for all those leaves to grow out here. It must be like one of those resilient grapevines.

This got me thinking about the concept of bliss. I had always heard that famous phrase, coined by Joseph Campbell: “Follow your bliss.” I thought it was one of those woo-woo spiritual mantras spread by people who were promoting “the good life”, which I took to mean, do whatever pleases you in the moment, and most likely it won’t be work.

But I was wrong.

What I’ve discovered in reading Campbell’s actual words is that in saying, “Follow your bliss,” he meant to find and follow your deepest, truest self. This is your bliss. Said Campbell himself:

“If your bliss is just your fun and your excitement, you’re on the wrong track. I mean, you need instruction. Know where your bliss is. And that involves coming down to a deep place in yourself….by bliss I mean the deep sense of being in it, and doing what the push is out of your own existence – it may not be fun, but it’s your bliss and there’s bliss behind pain too.”

In other words, it is WORK to follow your bliss. Following your bliss is not always a walk in the park. And it certainly isn’t just about pleasure in the moment. Following your bliss is an investment you make in the discovery of your true self, and then sharing your true self in service to the world.

Incidentally, the yogic tradition also describes bliss (ananda) as “the innermost core of our being,… where our soul lives and where we can glimpse the universal oneness that embraces us all” (BKS Iyengar, Light on Life). How do we experience bliss? Many volumes have been written, and many lives have been devoted to the study of this question. But it seems that many of us have been forced to confront this question as we discover that the pursuits of pleasure, or power, or status, or material possessions no longer satisfy our longings.

One metaphor for following one’s bliss is the journey of the root of the grapevine. Somehow this vine “knows” it is destined to produce fruit. It will not be deterred by the dryness of the soil, or the heat of the sun, or the competition from other vines surrounding it. Its roots just simply keep going downward, struggling to bore deeper into the hardness of the earth until a drop of moisture is found. Not knowing when it will find water, the root just keeps twisting and turning, sending far-reaching branches outward in all directions but always headed toward the source. When the least bit of dampness is found, it is drawn up to the surface to nourish the fruit. The fruit then carries the essence of this journey – the determination, the struggle, the faith without knowing – in the complexity of its flavor. Without struggle, these experienced farmers tell us, the sweetness of the fruit is compromised. We don’t value it as much.

When we eat the fruit, do we taste all the wisdom that is encapsulated in that little round globe of juiciness? Do we appreciate all the hardship of the roots that produced this particular sweetness? When we drink a glass of wine, do we recognize that many vines each had to follow their bliss – to follow, against all odds, their deepest destiny to bring life to their own sweet fruit – in order for us to enjoy even one sip?

Follow your bliss. But just remember, it may take a whole lot of digging through dry, hard, tough ground before you get to the one drop of inspiration that will start to feed the very best fruit you were meant to produce. Embrace all that digging. It’s what makes your fruit – your bliss – unlike any other.

All photos: Lisa Chu, at Robert Mondavi Winery, August 2009.

I started my violin school five years ago, knowing that I would have to start by recruiting the right parents – get their commitment, spend time educating them, and then hope for their long-term buy-in to a philosophy that extends well beyond the boundaries of violin training. What I couldn’t fully articulate back then but am realizing now is that I’m really teaching a way of being. It’s an awareness of the self as the gateway to deep, long-lasting learning. And mainly I’ve been focusing on developing this within each child. After all, that’s why we’re all gathered together – for the sake of the children.

But what I’m beginning to learn is that, in order for the child to learn optimally in this environment, there is an element of openness and awareness of themselves that the parents have to develop as well. This has been the harder problem to address. I’ve never told parents upfront that they are required to be coachable. Once I’ve screened and accepted the parents, it’s easy for me to become totally absorbed in my direct work with the child that I forget to specifically address the parent’s relationship to the child. I’ve used the excuse that it’s “not my place” to comment on parenting style, just to try to work with what is there, and do my best to “work around it” by ignoring the parent’s behaviors when they’re not helping the process. It’s been my habit to avoid the difficult situation of calling out a self-defeating behavior in a parent when it comes up, because I feel ill-equipped to do the necessary work of changing an adult’s patterns of instinctual behavior – especially something as primal as parenting.

The situation Pam describes with both the horse and her toddler son is all too familiar to me. Many times, at just the “threshold moment” when a child needs a strong leader to tell them to keep going, keep trying, and not give up on themselves, a parent’s instinctual response is to rush to their rescue, coddle them, and get all lovey-dovey. I haven’t had the authority and composure of the horse-whisperer (Koelle in Pam’s story) to say, “Getting affectionate right now is not helping the learning. The child needs you to be strong and to be a capable leader.”

Can you imagine saying that to a parent in front of their child? Maybe I need to find that voice within me.

The escalation that Pam describes with her son – where she tries being “lovey”, then tries bribing him with treats, and then negotiates some more, before finally losing her temper – is also such a common occurrence. This “dance” is so common that I wonder if it’s being recommended in some best-selling parenting book I’m not aware of. What is it that drives this behavior?

Pam offers us a framework for examining the emotions behind self-defeating habits, and what holds us back from making necessary changes. I so admire and respect Pam’s sharing of this part of herself, and inspiring us all to become more aware of our own resistance to change.

But my question is, are we really sure that we want to change? And do we know how we want to change?

I think it’s brave of Pam to include an analogy between a horse and a child in her story. The awareness I gained from Pam’s article is that fundamentally, training is training. Whether it’s a horse, a child, or an adult, there are certain common behaviors, emotions, and ways of confronting them effectively or not.

We could all learn a thing or two from a horse whisperer.