I studied high school at the LaSalle Institute in Chihuahua. In Mexico, high school lasts three years, and in the last year each person decides what area of focus they are going to pursue. The careers areas offered were related to humanities, administration, physics-mathematical studies, and for those who wanted to study medicine.
In my case, I had no idea what I wanted to study. I didn’t worry so much about deciding during my first year, but in the second, I did have to decide what area I was going to pursue during the third year.
I vaguely remember that there was a class that covered career orientation. The truth is, the name of the class didn’t mean anything to me (it was part of learning what it was about).
Within the crazy years of adolescence, it caught my attention that some friends and other classmates were very clear about what they wanted to study. Some of us had no idea, and others had some idea, but nothing clear yet. All of this was during the second year.
It may have been during this second year that we had a support questionnaire to help us decide which area of study to go to. The teacher was short, with big green eyes. I remember meeting with her individually to get the results of my questionnaire.
I remember being a little nervous. The results would not reflect a pass or fail grade, but rather a recommendation for an area of focus. The way I could process the experience was that the results would tell me what to choose, and from there see what university I could get into. Ultimately, I perceived the information as something of life or death. Yes, a little out of proportion.
The teacher was kind and warm, giving me a general description of what my answers to the questionnaire reflected. Her tone of voice, combined with the simplicity of the details she gave me, relaxed my nerves. After giving me the general information, she told me:
-The recommendation for you, based on your answers, is that the performing arts are a place where you can develop.
I understood her words, but the message went over my head.
-How is that?
I answered.
-Yes, the performing arts.
The truth is, I don’t think I’d heard that term much before, and if I had, it clearly hadn’t been important to me.
Before entering that session with the teacher, the careers I had in mind were psychology, engineering, anthropology, oh, and music. So when she told me “performing arts,” the concept didn’t immediately enter my head.
I liked industrial engineering. I didn’t dislike math, but I really wasn’t interested enough in it. Psychology has always intrigued me, it’s really caught my attention ever since. And music, frankly, had a bad reputation. What was heard most frequently was that a musician dies of hunger.
With these ideas prior to the meeting with the teacher, hearing that the performing arts were what my answers reflected the most was a bit confusing.
Although I had been studying music since I was little, for me sitting at the piano and studying was a personal activity. At the academy where I studied, there were recitals at the end of the courses, but personally I had never related music to the fact that it is a performing art.
The teacher who gave me the results of the questionnaire knew about my piano studies, and what she saw in my answers had a direct relationship.
But I couldn’t see it.
What the teacher could see was not evident to me.
Has it ever happened to you that someone perceives something in you that you couldn’t see at the time? Do you receive their words? Do you question them? Do you agree? Do you reject them?
There was an angel in Nazareth, who revealed to Mary that she would be the mother of God. Mary asked him how this could be possible.
Have you ever questioned what someone with more vision told you could be possible for you?
I remember questioning the teacher on several things, including the validity of the questionnaire itself, and even the possibility that my result was wrong. With great patience, she answered all my questions, and told me:
-The performing arts is something you could dedicate yourself to, you could grow as a person and develop, earn a living according to what you demonstrate are your preferences and abilities.
Yes, it was true that I liked music and I had been studying piano for a long time, but I did not see myself dedicating my life to music.
I am not sure that Mary, before receiving the angel’s message, would have imagined that she could be the mother of God.
And you, can you imagine that it could be true when someone tells you what you could be for yourself and for others? Do you think it can happen?
Would you like to believe it can happen?
Coming out of high school, in the midst of all my preferences, I chose to study music.
Five years later, I earned my Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in music, with the cello as my main instrument.
After graduating, it was a matter of months before I found myself part of the then young Chihuahua State Philharmonic Orchestra.
If someone had told me that this was going to happen, I don’t think I would have believed it. Even though I was already in the orchestra, it was hard for me to believe it, I was so excited.
It was only time that gave me the perspective necessary to agree several years later with what that teacher told me in high school. At the time, the words sounded very far away, and for me, somewhat impossible.
I didn’t need to see to believe. My teacher only needed to believe to see.
In your case, even without evidence, do you have the openness to believe that something different can happen in your life?
If the Spirit leads you, ask Jesus the Carpenter how you could trust, believe and hope in what you don’t see yet.
Marisol
P.S. We can hear about how Mary trusts, believes and hopes in what she can not see in the readings of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception during the season of advent, year/cycle C.
Photo credit to Araceli García Velez
