I was blessed to read a wonderful post this morning, by the beautiful Amanda Ashton, it spoke of a musician violinist, who played for 45 minutes on the Washington subway
Many, many people walked by, countless people heard the beautiful sound that his instrument made, yet only 4 people bothered to stop and only one person offered his applause with a clap, the musician barely made $20 for his efforts, yet the same musician, with the same violin played the same magical sounds on the very same night on one of the world’s most recognised stages.
The minimum ticket price to hear this beautiful rendition was $100 and there is no doubt, the house was full.
This experiment proved that an extraordinary frequency in an ordinary environment almost always initially is overlooked.
It made me wonder, deeply I pondered the magical image of this experiment.
And I asked myself “how many times do we put ourselves, in ordinary environments, and then berate and put ourselves down, because we did not experience the success that we predicted we would receive?”
When you do not have a lot of confidence, or a football team of avid supporters to cheer you on and keep you going, we tend to stand on the corner of our lives, playing our violin in a crowded subway, while every one else walks by, busily getting on, with getting on with their lives, or so it seems.
Everyone else seems to have it together, everyone else seems to know where they are going, look around you, they are briskly walking by as you play your best tune, but you might as well be a mouse on a box in the middle of the greatest ocean, your beautiful music, is not being heard over the clutter and bustling of moving fast in any direction, as people go from here to there, endlessly walking away.
It is a rare person who is travelling along side your bustling and cluttering crowd, that pauses and stops to listen to the beautiful sound that you create, and rarer still is the person who actually stops and appreciates the magic that you are creating.
And YES “IT” is magic, the thing that you are creating, the music, the program, the art the special project, is magical, beautiful and worthy of being brought out into the light, to be looked at, used, appreciated, seen or heard.
But if you are a small mouse on a box in the middle of the greatest ocean, who can hear you? Who can appreciate your gift? Who can participate in your magic?
Pushing our own doubt aside is a momentous task, being brave is, after all for the bravest of us all!
Ordinary environments may give us legs to stand tall, and may even build resilience and strength, but why don’t we all aim for Carnegie Hall? Why don’t we step out of the subway and step onto the stage, what ever the stage is for you, your talent, your job, or your life.
I know how hard it is to be seen, and I know the paralysing fear you feel, just before you step out of your comfort zone and into your spotlight, these feelings you have, we all have, all the time, in all different sized measures, but they are there none the less.
The gifting that you have inside of you, no matter what it is, needs to be brought out into the world, it needs to be heard and seen, experienced and touched, tasted and worn.
If you were looking for a sign, this is your sign, this is your permission to step onto the stage, and bring light to your thing, a candle hidden under a box cannot dispel the darkness, just like your thing cannot change the lives of others if you keep it all to your self.
Step out of the subway, and step onto your stage, you were born to be there!
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