What Do You See?

After our brochure for this summer's music camp was sent out, we received a letter from a fine, conscientious teacher. With good intentions, she pointed out that a child shown at the keyboard in one of the pictures we had chosen had a poor hand position, and this, she concluded, reflected poorly on the standards of our program. I immediately checked the picture, and sure enough, she was right. But as I looked at it, I realized why we selected that particular picture.

We chose the picture because we were captivated by the expression of delight on the child's face and did not even notice the hand position! Our goal was to communicate the positive spirit and nonjudgmental attitude that we value above all else in our learning environment. It is easy to fix a hand position, but not so easy to fix a broken spirit, a discouraged student or a fearful child.

What we pay attention to determines our experience. In Creating Health, Dr. Deepak Chopra explains: "When you buy a rose, you also buy its thorns. If you notice the rose, you have an experience of beauty; if you notice the thorns, you have an experience of pain." What do you see?