Month: October 2019

I was reading Becoming by Michelle Obama, a gift from last Christmas. Her description of riding the city bus to school caught my attention: “There’s no hurrying . . . You get on and you endure.”^[1] It sounds a lot like my attitude towards life, except that I am never patient enough to simply “endure.”

I work hard. If I feel passionate about something, I pursue it with every drop of blood in me. But I take scenic routes whenever I can. When I was little, it took me so long to finish my homework that mom had to consult my teachers repeatedly. According to mom, I would write, erase, rewrite, and erase a character until I was happy with how it looked on paper. (I don’t remember doing exactly that.) When I learn something new, it is a MUST for me to know its origin or the fundamentals. After installing a software (or, an app, nowadays), instead of learning the applications, I had to know the parameters—just so I can change things. I took time to gain skills that I considered essential for my work. When some of my friends were getting ready for retirement, I barely started working.

We get on the “life” bus. It moves on its own speed. Sometimes, it moves so fast that we lose control; sometimes, so slow that we wonder when it will move again. There is no way to rush forward or to hold it back.

Equal opportunities: We are all given twenty-four hours a day; we all get to take it one day at a time; and we all can choose how to spend our time. We sit on the bus watching things go by. It is up to each of us to observe, to learn and to enjoy the view. Or, we can always ENDURE.

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^[1]Michelle Obama, Becoming (New York: Crown, 2018), 57.

Early in the morning, I woke up to an email message from Naichia in Ohio reminding me to watch “Now Hear This,” a documentary series on PBS. Another message was from Paul in London with a link to BBC’s special report on scholarly work of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben. After lunch, Frank was checking in on me from Lübeck.

For decades, I have been separated from my family by an ocean and a continent. For some reason, most of my closest friends also live hundreds and thousands of miles away from me. (Of course, I also have very dear friends near me.) Yet, I know that I am never alone.

Like most artists, I often live in clouds of fantasies. So focused on my work that I often speak about things that are, to most people, nonsensical. Worst of all, I take all these things for granted. My friends tolerate and spoil me.

My friends make me think; they share titles of good books—not always best-sellers; they recommend inspiring performances—not always by renown artists; they send recipes; they tell mind-twisting jokes. They are not afraid of pointing out my weakness, be it in a performance or in my writing. They stop me before I go off the deep end.

Hail to you, my friends, wherever you are.

Nobody sees a flower, really—it is so small—we haven’t time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
—Georgia O’Keeffe