By Janice Carlin
Sometimes I can get too serious. OK, often, I get too serious.
I get so incredibly focused on whatever I am doing and talking about that there just seems to be no room for any silliness. But, I know that there really is room if I allow for it to be there. My son tells me that I am a hilarious person and he breaks out into laughter just by looking at my face! I smile when he says and does this because I remember a time in my past when the people I was around everyday could not even believe that I had a sense of humor at all. This was about half way through my career as a band director.
When I first began teaching I had a smile on my face every day. In fact, I would smile so much that my face would hurt. After I came back to teaching after earning my Master’s degree, I spent some years in a few rough, inner city schools. Soon, that smile became more difficult to bring forth. I felt that every moment of my day was serious, from making sure the students (and myself) were safe, to working as hard as I could to help them to be able to be successful when they had little confidence, skills, or support.
One of my favorite stories about how joy broke into a serious situation is from this time. My first year as a head director was at a school where the band program had been left to falter and the students were performing well below their capabilities. They needed encouragement and to remember that they had great potential if they would only embrace learning some fundamental, basic skills.
They would continually say the dreaded, “I can’t,” to me, and I would come back every time and say, “You can!”
I made it my motto to say to them, “You Can Do It!” I can remember even going through and putting a piece of paper with those words typed in really large font into every one of their music folders so that they could see if for themselves every day.
Now, as I said, when I am doing something, especially something I care about, I become extremely focused. I took my job very, very seriously and when I was on that podium teaching and rehearsing, I was 100 percent in the zone. During one rehearsal, I picked up my trombone to illustrate to the French horn players what their part of the music was supposed to sound like. For those who do not know, transposing French horn music to play on a trombone is not the simplest task! In a moment of confusion as I was trying to get the proper pitches right in my mind, I messed up while I was playing.
I said without even thinking, “Ugh, I can’t do it!” To which the students, some of them even standing up, yelled back at me, “You CAN do it!”
I stopped, put my horn down, looked at them and cracked up. It was hilarious! It was the first time I had shared a humorous or even joyful moment with them at all. It felt great, and the intensity that was always there during our rehearsals lifted momentarily as I felt a deeper connection between my students and myself.
Although we may feel like stopping to experience a joyful moment will take away from what we are doing or working to accomplish, it actually does the opposite.
It allows for human connection, warmth, and humility. In my story I was reminded of the importance of walking my talk, and also that it is OK to have a human slip up now and then. The kids did not behave any worse afterward and they did not lose respect for me because I made a mistake. I look upon that moment in time now with great appreciation and I still smile when I think about it. And of course, it was the beautiful children who led me to and allowed for me to experience a beautiful moment of joy in an otherwise intense and potentially embarrassing situation.
To stop, breathe, and be fully present in the moment with the children, engaging them not through intensity of passion, but instead with joy-filled passion, was how I started my career. But, along the way I lost that feeling. I allowed myself to become tainted by the fear, violence, and pressures of competition around me. I would have loved to be able to feel joy surging through me as I taught my way through my days. No matter what or where I was teaching, I was always surrounded by children who just wanted to be able to make music. The joy to me became the journey of leading the kids to the end result of making beautiful music together, rather than enjoying every single moment of that journey.
I have learned such a great deal about so many things since my days as a music teacher. Some of the most powerful experiences in my career came from moments like this one—unexpected inspiration, unexpected feelings of connection, unexpected situations, which pulled me and the kids into a direct experience of joy in the moment. I now know how to stop and to feel joy in the present moment rather than always looking toward the end result. Connection with others, inner peace, smiling, hugging, laughing, clear-knowing—all of these feel like joy to me, and I value each experience of them.
Janice Carlin is an intuitive channel and the author of The Sensitivity Factor, Be Free, Toward Ascension, Empathic Sensitivity, and The Foundations Healing System Guidebook, a revolutionary healing system she developed for highly sensitive people. She is passionate about sharing information that empowers people to care for themselves, their children and the Earth in the most honoring ways possible. A leader in teaching the direct links between science and spirituality, which empower people in their everyday lives, she can be found online at Empowered Thriving Resources, www.janicecarlin.com.