As parents we sign our kids up for numerous activities, swimming, skating, dancing, gymnastics, soccer, hockey, music, choir, circus school, diving, horseback riding, you name it we do it, and we commit to driving them to all these activities week after week. We sign away our lives, agreeing to fundraise, carpool, donate time and money and work. Sometimes as parents we have a secret desire that our child becomes the next Gretzky, or the next Karen Kain, but for the most part, we do this because we want to expose our children to different things, keep them healthy, well balanced and “out of trouble”.
As adults however there is this notion that we “missed the boat” if we didn’t do something as a child, that it’s too late now to study music, or circus, or whatever we might desire because well, “it’s not like I’m going to quit my job and be a gymnast, skiier, ballet dancer, singer NOW! So, we resign ourselves to never really working at something, we might take a class here or there, but we don’t make an effort to excel like we might expect our children to in their classes. We don’t need to really “learn” or become good at it because it’s too late for us anyhow.
It seems that “adult classes” is usually synonymous with “mediocre classes”. It is entirely acceptable to sign up for an adult class, show up “when you can”, because after all we all know how hard and stressful it is to be an adult, parent, working person, right? So let’s just resign ourselves to utter and complete mediocrity in all that we do, except perhaps in our careers. Though some might have extremely creative careers which are truly inspiring. Most people need a creative outlet, apart from work.
It might be a little bit nice to just get out of the house and do a little dancing, or yoga or whatever, just for a change of pace, but it’s not invigorating, life giving, exciting, fun. We are adults after all, things are never as fun as they were when we were kids right? We seem to think it’s ok or normal to take mediocre classes, and we have low expectations of how much we might learn. If it’s a little bit fun, we seem to think that is ok.
What if we went into our extra curricular activities with the expectation that we would excel, we’d learn, we’d laugh, we’d grow in leaps and bounds beyond what we’d ever imagined? Is that a silly concept because we are “adults” and we don’t need such things anymore? I think not, I think we need it, we need to laugh our asses off, scream, cry, have fun, jump around, play, be goofy. We need more than a little muscle toning, and core strengthening, we need inspiration.
I have seen people become marathon runners, people who have never jogged a step in their lives, but when it comes to the arts, somehow we tend to think we don’t have the “talent”. Well if your body can go from near death upon running for 5 minutes, to doing a marathon in less than a year, just imagine how much you could improve your singing in a year or any other creative venture. I have seen first hand through the growth and development of Burstin’ with Broadway how much fun it is when 130 people hit that chord with such harmony we all stop breathing for a second to soak it in, 130 people who come from all different musical backgrounds, some who had never sung a note in public before joining and others who have sung for years.
I have yet to find anything more amazing than vocal harmony, when a group of people create harmony with their voices, in one space. It is transcendent. The only reason we can get to those places in our rehearsals is because people commit to the group, they come every week, they learn their parts and as a result we have an amazing time every Tuesday night, singing, laughing, harmonizing. Doesn’t matter how old we are, we all want to do things well, that is what drives us forward, gets our mojo going, and gives us life.
