Monday, September 15, 2025
I now like to see everything arrange itself. I now enjoy seeing it unfold. That’s not procrastination, but a kind of “hands off” existence. It’s hands off. My hands will do it, but fate is not in my own hands.
Your fingers do the walking, the typing, the building. But I wish I could explain how they aren’t “your” hands, nor anyone’s. When I played for my best friend’s funeral in 2018, it was an event. He was a prominent cathedral musician and high school music educator. The cathedral at which he was the music director for 35 years was packed, and I was the organist/choir director for the ceremony. I feared I’d lose it, dissolve into a puddle, and be unable to keep my composure. I thought my emotions would get the best of me.
But the best of me knew otherwise. My emotions didn’t budge. I even enjoyed it, and it felt out of my hands. I saw my hands playing; but it felt as though I was “being played.” It was a dual experience. At one level, I was playing; and at a deeper level, I was gone. Safe and sound. None of it was my doing, but my hands did every last bit of that playing and conducting, yet I could take no credit.
Can your mind get the best of you? Can your emotions get the best of you? Can your circumstances get the best of you? That depends upon what you know to be the best of you. Is it the meddling Miranda or the surrendering Sam? For me, surrendering Sam enjoys watching how intricately the universe arranges itself through Ryan, the vessel. Meddling Miranda thinks her emotions and “life” can get the best of her, and she flits about, controlling and “losing it.”
But can anything get the best of you? As if.