A lot of people were up in arms recently over an article which stated that musicians had it pretty good. The article listed “orchestra musician” as one of three relatively low-stress, high-paying jobs, along with yoga instructors and massage therapists. Many rotten tomatoes were thrown at the writer for claiming that an orchestra musician did not have to deal with urgent deadlines and that they found their music to be spiritually fulfilling. Now, as someone who once tried to apply eye make-up while crying right before a rehearsal, I am not here to tell you that the job is all fun and spiritual fulfillment. I would, however, say this to the rotten tomato throwers: stress is not something to be proud of.
As my favorite yoga instructor likes to say, sometimes we think that our stress defines us. We are reluctant to let it go; we’re better at hanging on. But then there’s a wake-up call that kindly informs us that our beloved stress is actually killing us. That’s when we get serious about taking deep breaths, exercising, bubble baths and other stress-reducing activities. Unfortunately, stress management can easily sneak into the category of “to-do”, which can sometimes become a list of things that never get done.
When I find myself in this particular boat, I am glad when the occasional lifesaver-thought floats across my mind. These thoughts are mysterious creatures; I don’t know where they hide or what instigates their emergence. They are things I once knew, maybe even mantras I used to repeat, but they have slipped into my uncatalogued archives. Then they drop by, unannounced, and my shoulders relax and I start breathing again. So I thought, maybe if I wrote them down, I could keep them all there in my mental living room.
- The magic words were spoken during a yoga class my mom and I attended a few years ago. I didn’t even notice that I was worrying about a hundred things until the teacher said, “Realize that, in this moment, everything is perfect.” I remember looking out the window, feeling that all my problems were somewhere out there, in the future, maybe even imaginary, and that inside the room was this perfect moment of stillness, safety and warmth. Since that day, I have found it so powerful to recognize the perfection in each moment. My favorite is when I’m taking a shower in the morning and getting all worked up over all the bad things that might possibly befall me sometime in the future. The words cross my mind like an airplane banner and I say, “Ellen, you’re in the shower.”
- When practicing the violin, I find that it is best to treat it like a matter of life and death. You have to practice runs and shifts and string crossings as though, if you miss them in the performance, you will soar into the crowd like a stray acrobat. When you are trying to fall asleep at night, however, you need to get real. You must realize that IT’S JUST MUSIC. It has to be capitalized because you need to say it slowly and forcefully, so as to drown out all the unhelpful chatter that’s keeping you awake.
- If you think about stress from a scientific standpoint, you realize that we modern humans are doing it wrong. Stress hormones, such as cortisol and norepinephrine, are supposed to be for truly dangerous situations. It’s kind of embarrassing, when you think about it, that these hormones are coursing through our bodies when all we’re doing is sitting at a desk and clicking buttons on TurboTax. That’s why I like to remind myself from time to time that I’m not being chased by a lion. That usually sends those hormones back to their caves, tails between their legs.
- I’ve been reading Masanobu Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution. The book describes Masanobu’s unique farming method in which the farmer basically stands back and lets Mother Nature do her thang. Masanobu began developing this “do-nothing” method after a particularly lucid moment when he was a young man. One morning, after a restless night of wandering, he saw a heron squawk and fly over the harbor. Instantly, his doubts and worries vanished and he mumbled the words, “In this world there is nothing.” Maybe these words sound depressing to you, but when I say them out loud to myself, it’s as if there were a hundred angry men gripping the throats of a hundred other men in my brain, and suddenly everybody lets go.
- This one has the power to turn my limbs to jelly every single time. Although it is useful in many situations, I usually employ it when I need to reply to 15 emails and return 10 phonecalls. Each time I receive an email or voicemail, I attach a heavy ball and chain to my ankle, which makes daily chores (digging ditches, chipping stone) very lugubrious indeed. Then it hits me, usually quite suddenly: You are free. That’s when I realize that the chains were never really there, and that I am an independent individual, free to move about the house as I please. I can’t account for it, but that is also the time that I finally get back to all those nice people.
Before I wrap up, I want to say one last thing to all the rotten-tomato throwers: Always somebody gonna be wrong on the internet. Just remember that.