Like Practicing in Public…

“Life,” said Baron Lytton, “is playing a violin solo in public, and learning the instruments as one goes on.” We are often inclined to judge people by the flaws in their performance. We are likely to judge a young person, for instance by some foolish or inexperienced act or utterance. People have sometimes carried through life the penalty of a single remark they have made, while hundreds of constructive, intelligent remarks are not remembered.

This does not mean that what a person says or does is not significant, or that he should not be accountable for his words and actions. But there is no perfection in any of us, and in many ways people differ principally in the percentage of their goodness or faults.

To use an example, the percentage of so-called perfect diamonds is very, very small, yet there are many, very beautiful stones that have some slight flaws. And we don’t discard the diamond for the flaw. At this point however, the comparison fails us, for people are not static. They change. They learn⎯often they repent, and if a person’s performance is unacceptable at some point, this is not to say that it may not later improve. While we cannot set aside the laws of cause and effect or pretend there are no penalties for a poor performance, we must remember that people change:⎯they can repent, and they can improve.

The violinist whose performance we pay to hear plays for us only after long preparation and practice, with many imperfect notes and unpleasant sounds and much faulty fingering in the process of practicing. But this is usually without an audience. But much of our practice in learning how to live life is out in the open, where others are aware of it. Life is for learning, for practicing, for improving, and it is not always easy, as everyone knows. We all need understanding⎯especially the young⎯for so often we do our practicing in public.