Last week we attended a fine performance of Two Pianos, Four Hands at Peterborough Players. It was sometimes very funny, especially the first act, which gave a picture of the two children struggling with their pianos, their piano teachers, and their parents. (Alas, I saw myself in some of it, as the parents pushed their sons to master their instruments.) And it was sometimes poignant, as the two young musicians — very talented, very competitive, very ambitious — discovered as 17-year-olds that they didn’t really have what it takes to achieve their dreams of becoming concert pianists. They emerged from adolescence as failures.

I didn’t only identify with the overbearing fathers. For I too have had to deal with the experience of falling short of the excellence I was once sure was in store for me. It’s a hazard of being relatively talented early in life and having to discover that one is relatively mediocre on the larger stage. It’s the Peter Principle, generalized beyond the business world.

Continue reading “Reflections on Mediocrity”

A dozen years ago, towards the end of our son David’s battle with leukemia, we accompanied him in his wheelchair out into the hospital garden. We’d been there many times before, but this time was a little different. As we slowly worked our way around, we stopped longer than usual while he gazed at a flower. I have no recollection of what kind of flower had caught his attention (nor of other details of the visit that day), but I remember that he was unwilling to tear himself away from it.

Finally, after many minutes, he whispered, “It’s so beautiful!”

Continue reading “David and the Flower”