Excellence Is A Deliberate Choice

In Gita Mehta’s novel, A River Sutra, the daughter of a master musician tells of her experience learning from her father:

My first music lesson extended several months. In all that time I was not permitted to touch an instrument. . . . Instead my father made me sit next to him in the evenings as the birds were alighting on the trees. “Listen,” he said in a voice so hushed it was as if he was praying. “Listen to the birds singing. Do you hear the half-notes and micro tones pouring from their throats? . . . Hear? How that song ended on a single note when the bird settled into the tree? The greatest ragas must end like that, leaving just one note’s vibration in the air. . . .Still an entire year passed before my father finally allowed me to take the veena across my knees. . . . Morning after morning, month after month he made me play the [scales] over and over again, one hand moving up and down the frets, the other plucking at the veena’s strings, until my fingers bled. . . .I had been under my father’s instruction for five years by now. At last my father felt I was capable of commencing the performance of a raga. . . .

The father understood that excellence is a deliberate choice and guided the daughter along a path that nurtured her understanding and appreciation for the process. Shouldn’t we do the same?

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