It May Be Harder Than You Think

My daughter Becca is an athlete. She has been playing soccer for a long time which means she is used to the training. She has run in the off season, lifted weights, done countless drills and endured long practices in the blazing heat. She understands what it means to be an athlete. This is her senior year and for whatever reason she got it into her head to try out for the Spring musical at school. She likes to sing and I think thought it would be a fun thing to do and besides how hard could it be? Well, amazingly enough she made it. She is part of the chorus and a cabaret girl in the musical The Beauty and The Beast. She came home after finding out she made it and she was ecstatic. She hadn't realized how competitive the whole tryout was going to be. The day they started rehearsals she came home and plopped the script book on the kitchen table. She was absolutely flabbergasted at how much work went into a musical. She watched a musical on tv the other night and it was like she was watching the Olympics. She has complete and utter respect for anyone and everyone who has ever been in a musical. It has been a great thing to watch. As an athlete I think she would have rolled her eyes at anyone who would have said how difficult rehearsal was for a musical. Not now. She is the staunchest of advocates. I think I see some of myself in Becca. I look at people's lives from a distance and make judgments. I am reminded of a saying I had on my desk for quite a while. It read something like this,"Be careful how you speak. Everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle". The old saying is "walk a mile in someone else's moccasins". My dear daughter is learning it is just as difficult to walk a mile in dancing shoes as it was to run many in cleats.