get this right

The younger lass rifled through a filing cabinet with some of my piano scores and found a spiral-bound booklet of the repertoire assigned to me my senior year of college. She slapped it up on the music desk and toddled off to do something else.

As I walked past the piano I caught sight of the score she had left open, and I stopped to thumb through the pages. It was the "working copy" where my piano professor and I noted all sorts of things related to the piece and its performance: fingerings, pedaling, dynamics, harmonic analysis, and phrasing, among other things like this note I scribbled:

 

get this right.

as in: quit making this same mistake here.  You know it's coming.  It's tripped you up enough times to merit a note in the score *and* a highlighter, so fix it already.  Don't make it again.

How many times in a day do I make the same mistakes or allow myself to edge too close to that line where I can't help but bungle a situation that presents itself over and over again -- one I've had the opportunity to address and learn from and traverse successfully going forward?  For whatever reason, I still make some of  the same mistakes.  

My dad says I use my music degree every day, even those days when I don't touch a piano.  Maybe this is what he means.  And thank the good Lord for his infinite mercy in forgiving those mistakes, even though I make them time and again.  Isn't that what Easter, which we are at last celebrating, is all about -- forgiveness of sins and everlasting life?

I don't operate under the delusion that I am perfect or will always handle every situation perfectly, but I would like to eliminate some of those oft-made mistakes by considering the factors that contribute to my making them and doing what needs to be done to set up a better outcome.  

Here's what I hope I did get right today:  I hope I made good use of the time God gave me this day to show his love and mercy to those around me.  I hope in those moments when I felt like I might lose my patience or withdraw from interaction in the face of some drama that I was able to recognize them inwardly and overcome them either by expressing those emotions in a healthy and respectful way or by waiting a minute to let them blow over.   I hope to have shown my bambini that Mama does make mistakes sometimes, as we all do, and that when I do I try my best to make amends, tend to the hurt I may have caused, and move on.

We do our best, says my Grannie, and that's all we can do.  Part of that is built on learning from our mistakes -- God willing, before warranting a highlighter's notice.