Inspirational People: A New Project

It’s often said that people aren’t really appreciated until they die. There’s a little something in us that would like to know what might be said at our funeral. Will we be eulogized? What good things will people remember about us when we’re gone? We go through life not fully knowing if, or to what extent, we’re having a positive impact on others. We doubt ourselves—we doubt our own motives and abilities. We’re so intimately acquainted with our own faults that we often find it hard to see anything else, and we therefore find it difficult to imagine that that anyone else sees us differently than we see ourselves. We’re incredibly curious, but also rather terrified at the prospect of finding out how others really perceive us. We expect—and yet dread—a mere conformation of what our negative self image tells us, but we allow ourselves to hope that maybe a little bit of something good shines through and actually gets noticed.

Well, the fact is, a lot more good shines through than most people realize. The problem is that a lot of us spend so much time worrying about what others think of us that it doesn’t occur to us to let others know what we think of them—to let people know what we like about them, how grateful we are for the positive impact they’ve had on our lives, or simply that we love them. It’s sad to go through life not knowing.

Of course, what I’ve written above is not exactly original—Dale Carnegie and plenty of other people have said similar things. We know we ought to express appreciation more often, but we’re just too busy, too forgetful, or simply don’t know how to go about it. I confess that I’ve used all of those excuses before. So I’ve decided to go about it in a more intentional and concrete way: I’m going to write a series of “blurbs” about people who have changed my life for the better. My inspiration for this came from a presentation by composer/conductor David Brunner at the 2015 Tennessee conference of the American Choral Directors Association. The entire presentation was simply about people who had positively impacted his life. He talked about several individuals, their unique gifts, and what special things he gleaned from them that made him a better person.

At first, I must confess that I felt a little nonplussed. We’re here to learn practical information about choral conducting, and here you are giving a sentimental speech about people most of us don’t even know! But by the end of the presentation he had completely won me over. I don’t know that there’s ever an inappropriate time to say good things about others; we can never do it enough. And it’s never more appropriate than in the context of a conference about music. It’s a rare bird who pursues a career in music because his parents forced him or because he’s after money. No, I venture to say we’re all in this because someone inspired us—someone’s music touched us in a profound way. And we’re all in this because we thereafter had an inestimably huge amount of help and guidance along the way from people who cared about us and believed in the crazy “artist life” we’d chosen for ourselves.

At the end of his speech, Dr. Brunner handed out a sheet on which we could write down the names of people who had had a positive impact on our lives. He told us to contact them and let them know how much we appreciated them. Well, I suppose the following series of blurbs is one way I’ve chosen to take Dr. Brunner up on his challenge. And to start off the expressions of appreciation, I’d just like to say that I am immensely grateful for his presentation that day at Tennessee ACDA. And perhaps as you read a little about the people who have impacted me the most, you, too, will think of people you could write about or contact to say “thanks.” In expressing appreciation, we make the world around us a better place. If nothing else, it prevents us from becoming egotists, because it reminds us of how dismally we may have failed without the inspiration and practical help we’ve received along the way.

I’ll be making every effort to post a blurb about someone once a week for the next several weeks.