Defining Moments

The astonishing human spirit can conquer virtually anything if we CHOOSE to make a difference.   Ordinary people can do amazing things even through adversity if we CHOOSE to make a difference.  The following is a true story, and it defines all of us, from the weak to the strong, the poor to the wealthy.  Lessons can be learned through the smallest trials to the largest trials.

In November 1995, Itzhak Perlman, a violinist, went 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, 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 awesome sight.

 

He walked 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 that time, 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.

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.

He was modulating, changing and re-composing 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.  Then people rose and cheered.  There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium.  They were all on our feet, screaming and cheering; doing everything they could to show how much they appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet everyone and then he said (not boastfully) 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 statement that was.   Perhaps that is the definition 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 when 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.

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 when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.