(I
was touched by this story found in Azriela Jaffe's newletter, "The
Entrepreneurial Couples Success Letter", ECS Newsletter, Issue #122
(click). Azriela was touched by the story which she found in a weekly
newsletter that sends out a "cool story every week". I pass it along
to you. Subscribe by visiting www.52best.com.
On
Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give
a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.
If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting
on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio
as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid
of two crutches.
To
see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly,
is an unforgettable sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until
he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches
on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and
extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the
violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds
to play.
By
now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he
makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently
silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he
is ready to play.
But
this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few
bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap
- it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking
what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do. People
who were there that night thought to themselves:
"We
figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick
up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another
violin or else find another string for this one."
But
he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled
the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from
where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power
and such purity as they had never heard before.
Of
course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work
with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that
night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating,
changing, recomposing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded
like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that
they had never made before.
When
he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people
rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause
from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming
and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated
what he had done.
He
smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us,
and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent
tone,
"You
know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music
you can still make with what you have left."
What
a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard
it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the way of life - not just for
artists, but for all of us.
Here
is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of
four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds
himself with only three strings. So he makes music with three strings,
and the music he made that night with just three strings was more
beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever
made before, when he had four strings.
So,
perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in
which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and
then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we
have left.
Written
by Jack Riemer, Houston Chronicle
is a "state of being". We don't have to do anything but be our best
self. 
is treating people well, without judgement, and allowing them to
be who they are, not necessarily who we want or judge them to be.
is everyone's right to be seen and heard clearly for who they are,
just as they are. 