As I have matured as a human being, his music hasn't really grown on me at all. It wasn't until I heard the aforementioned symphony live last summer at Interlochen that I began to see that maybe I was missing something. That maybe Ludwig and I had some things in common.
If you follow my blog at all, you can probably see (more clearly than me perhaps) that I have been struggling with feeling happy since we moved to Pennsylvania. I firmly believe that we are here for a reason. Actually, we are probably here for several reasons. The kids are having fundamentally important life experiences here that will change their lives forever. The schools give them opportunities that I believe can't be found in many other places. They have formed good relationships here with people who care about them. John is happily ensconced in his job in Altoona. He respects his partners in his medical practice, and for the first time, doesn't dread going to work each morning.
Me, on the other hand? I am losing who I am.
The hardest part, for sure, is seeing my kids leave home. They have been my "job" for the past 21 years, and it feels as though the company is downsizing, or worse, I am being laid off. It's hard to feel not-needed.
Too, I've had a difficult time making friends in this part of the world. Granted, I have a difficult time making friends ever, but there always seem to be some kind souls who look past my painfully shy exterior and see the loyal, funny person I am on the inside. This wouldn't bother me...this not having friends...except that I have to leave the house occasionally, and I'm reminded in all different kinds of arenas that I am pretty much alone. It hurts terribly.
One of the things that my friends (and my best friend, John) recognize is that I have so much to give. Not only from the heart, and with the money that John earns, but creatively too. I have a lot of abilities that can help others, but I'm not given many opportunities to share them. At times, I feel like I am wasting away.
I have struggled my entire life with confidence and self-esteem. I envy those people who know what they are capable of doing, and do it! People who know that they are worth something and expect to be paid for what they can do. I am not this person, and when I try to be this person, my feelings of worthlessness are self-fulfilling.
So, back to my composer friend. After having a hard day today, and driving home to the music of the Egmont Overture (which I've heard countless times in my life), I realized that Beethoven and I could have been friends. Close, close friends.
I could feel the same angst in his music that I feel in my life. I could feel the loneliness. I could hear that he too might have known what it was like to feel misunderstood, or under appreciated. I doubt he ever struggled with confidence, being the A-list composer that he was, but maybe he didn't feel that he had as many friends as he should have. As I listened to his musical creation, I could channel my sadness, and my frustration into the notes on the radio. I felt as though Beethoven himself might have known what I have been going through.
I called John. He listened to me cry, and he did what he could do: tell me he was sorry, and that he knew what I was saying. He knows me better than anyone on this planet, and he knows what I have to give. He knows what I can do, and he recognizes that other people don't recognize what I can do. He knows that people don't give me chances that I deserve, and most importantly, he sees the sacrifices that I have made in my life so that my family can be happy. He frequently believes in me more than I believe in myself.
At that moment, alone in my car, crying over the phone, with Beethoven's music in the background, I felt understood. And for the first time in my life, I really understood Beethoven. What he must have gone through and what life experiences he must have endured to write the music that he did. And at that moment, understanding was really all I could ask for from anyone.
Awwww I'm so sorry you feel so bad mama. We love you and you are our accomplishments. Seriously, we kids could have never made it where we are now if you hadn't sacrficed so much for us. Thanks so much Mama for being so loving and caring to us, and I'm glad you found solace in classical music. It's really reflective of any mood or feeling, you can feel, and it sounds like this really helped you.
ReplyDeleteLove you!
Larisa, I love you so, so much! I don't know if there is anything else I can say that will make you feel better. I hope you know how amazing I think you are, how much I look up to you, and how much I treasure our friendship. I wish I lived closer so I could tell you face-to-face (and often) how great you are!
ReplyDeleteAww.. I'm so sorry to read this. But I absolutely love how you've related your current situation to that of a composers. I totally can relate to you with some of the thoughts you're feeling-- except I'm in another generation. I truly do love you and see you for the amazing woman that you are.. Inside and out. You will make it through this refiner's fire! I believe in you.
ReplyDeleteI love Aris and I love CS Lewis. He explains everything in such a profound yet simple way. I think Aris is being prepared for something greater and she is hanging in there so well!! Here are C.S. Lewis' comments on Aris' current situation:
ReplyDeleteC.S. Lewis
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Here is another comment by my friend Clive about Aris' situation:
ReplyDeleteNow it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily good; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.