One of the yoga classes I teach takes place in a choir room. I arrived early one day, and as I sat outside, I heard the choir director ask everyone to sing a middle C.
Her request was followed by silence.
She repeated, “Please, sing a middle C.”
Silence.
She said, “You are all seasoned singers. Why don’t you want to sing middle C?”
“I’m afraid,” one voice answered.
Another said, “There’s a right answer. I don’t want to try and get it wrong.”
The choir director then explained how she once worked with a high school choir. After the students arrived every day, she would play middle C four times and ask them to sing the note. One day, she asked the students to sing middle C.
A student said, “But you always play it for us.”
Other students protested as well.
The choir director replied, “Trust yourself. It’s in you.”
The students started to sing one by one, and wouldn’t you know it, they knew middle C.
Because it was there, in them.
The choir director thanked this current group and they dispersed. As I went into the room to get ready for my yoga class, I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment.
How often we are afraid to try something, even something simple, because we are afraid of getting it wrong. How often we let our worries and our fears strangle the joy and freedom of a moment. How often we don’t trust ourselves.
Middle C sits perfectly balanced in the middle of everything. How often we shy away from practicing the very things that bring us balance, because what if we fail?
At the same time there’s something we need to remember: Middle C is not the only note.
In other words, we do not have to be perfectly balanced all the time. Our life’s song would be very small (and boring) if we only allowed it to be one note.
Thank all that is holy that we have a full range of ways we can be—simple and complex, melancholy and triumphant and everything in between. And thank all that is holy that there is always a center we can return to—a middle point around which everything else can revolve.
A place to focus before we move bravely out and out toward our wild edges.
You have a center.
A center you can return to with your deep and intentional breath.
A place you can gather in and focus—your energies, your courage—so you can trust yourself and be brave, moving out into the world and singing your wild and beautiful song.
Live light, y'all.
Trust yourself
Yes!
Beautiful