Lessons from My Mom on Staying Young Forever
I am six years old and I’ve just asked my mom to help me make a list of piano compositions I have mastered to date. I’ve come up with three, maybe four, all of the two- and three-note variety. (Mozart, I am not.) She glances at the list and comments, “Away in a Manger.”
I look at her with genuine astonishment. Away in a Manger?! That’s pretty advanced stuff . . . I can’t play that!
She says, “Sure you can.”
We sit down at the keyboard; thirty minutes later, she’s right: I can. I feel exuberant.
In fact, everything I’ve been able to accomplish in my life I attribute to youthful exuberance. Not mine: hers.
Fast forward seven years. I am thirteen and my mom is planning a school trip to Greece with me and about a dozen classmates. We’re going to perform Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. She says, we ought to have music for the choruses. She asks if I wouldn’t mind writing it. Just like that. Like she was asking if I wouldn’t mind doing the dishes.
But, but—I’m no composer. Give me a break, Mom: I’m thirteen years old, I can’t set Aeschylus to concert-quality music!
She says, “Sure you can.”
A few months later we are performing the music in an ancient stone amphitheater near Delphi—the same spot, incredibly, where the play had its premiere a few thousand years ago. A few years later I’m at a reception at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, because I’ve won the international BMI Awards for Student Composers. Whaddya know: she was right again.
At the same time, I’m also about to do something a little radical: I’m about to drop out of high school—in order to start my own school. That’s right: start my own school. Here’s how this came about:
My friends and I have been talking. We’re all going to schools we hate, and one day we think, wouldn’t it be cool to start our own school, where we could actually learn something? But, we’re only kids. We can’t really start our own high school . . . can we? And you already know what my mom has to say about that.
“Sure you can.”
We meet. We dream, talk, plan, take action. A year later we’re an independent alternative high school that goes on to send its graduates to places like Yale and Harvard.
The bumble bee, Mary Kay used to say, flies because it doesn’t realize that it can’t.
When I was young, adults would ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I never knew how to answer them. I still don’t. Maybe I never grew up. But why “be” one thing? My mom had a different approach. She simply said, “You can do whatever you set out to do.” For five decades, I’ve been putting her belief to the test. If I were a high-wire performer with my mom’s philosophy as my only net, I’d still feel pretty safe.
They say children will drive you crazy asking the question, “Why?” But we know we’ve truly taught them well when we hear them ask this one: Why not?
And if you think you can’t, I have three words for you: Sure you can.
This article is excerpted from The Zen of MLM; it first appeared in the July 2004 edition of Networking Time.
