When I was sixteen years old, I was living a clumsy life. In fact, I suspect the word clumsy was possibly invented in order to most precisely describe the state of my life at that time. That year, I was in the grip of a raging eating disorder, my home life was pretty painful since my brother had decided to experiment heavily with drugs at age 14, I was stealing money from my part time weekend job, I had a dysfunctional relationship with a boy I thought I loved but was pretty sure didn’t love me, I was failing algebra, I drove a Chevette, and most of the time I felt excruciatingly lonely and sad.
I was also in the school choir, where we had a genuinely terrifying voice teacher named “Ms. Z.”. She was infamous for her biting criticism of students and for being exceptionally demanding. Students would cry after class all the time, because this teacher was so intense and we so wanted to please her. And, I eagerly submitted myself to this frightening persona (which is what it was) every third period for my entire junior year of high school. She was an absolutely uncompromising perfectionist.
One day in choir we had to learn a new piece, which was actually one of the extra-bad days to come to class because anytime we would sing something for the first time we would all make mistake after mistake. We were all butchering the song, putting Ms. Z. in an especially bad mood.
At one point, she decided to spend little bit of time trying to show one young woman on the end of the row (they are always on the end) how to sing a certain part. I had that conflicted feeling of relief that when I got older I would learn was called schadenfrude, or “invidious comparison”; where our compassion for the less fortunate is tempered by selfish wish-fulfillment. But, that day, it just felt like the rest of us had been spared the gaze of the “Eye of Sauron”. Anyway, the young woman was definitely cracking under all the pressure. She couldn’t sing the piece at all. Ms. Z’s frustration was reaching epic levels..….. and then she called on me.
Panic, terror, shock, and a more than healthy dose of adrenaline coursed through my veins all in a matter of tenths of seconds. Without even really thinking about what I was doing, I sang the part. I sang instinctively, almost without self-consciousness, partly because I was so distracted by what had just happened with this poor other victim on the end. I was hardly thinking about myself at all.
After I finished, the teacher stopped, put her hands down, and asked:
“Did you hear the elegance in that voice?”
I felt like a dandelion ball who had just met the business end of a blow dryer. I was stunned that anyone would use such a word in relation to me. Lonely, overweight, failing algebra, driving-a-Chevette-me. Clumsy me. For the first time in my life, something associated with me was called elegant.
Understand, I had great parents who encouraged and told me I was smart and talented and had good people skills, but this was a specific description applied to me that I had never heard before. Nothing I had ever produced or identified with had ever been called anything close to elegant. And, I could not stop thinking about that word. I kept rolling it over and over in my head. Elegant. My voice is elegant. I sing elegantly. I have elegance. In me. Elegance. Is. Mine.
That word broke through my adolescent stupor.
Ever since that day, I have been a person who pursues elegance.
I feel a certain affinity with it, like we have each other in common and we would recognize each other if we saw each other across a crowded room. I wear things that I think will make me look elegant, I associate with people and ideas that I think are elegant, I try to give elegant gifts and make elegant meals and I seek out the most elegant versions or forms of practically anything. When I speak, I am aware of how I move my hands because I don’t want to use choppy gestures when I prefer elegant ones. I refer to elegance as if I have a certain understanding with it that only comes from familiarity and close kinship. I have sought and claimed elegance like it was a part of myself that got separated from me at birth. Cross your two fingers together like you do when you’re showing how intimate two people are; that’s elegance and me.
I went from clumsy to elegant in a matter of minutes, and I’ve never (except for a few moments in an especially humiliating step-aerobics class one Saturday morning in 2006) looked back. I’ve thanked that teacher personally numerous times for all the ways her demanding approach made me a stronger, better singer and person, but I don’t think I’ve ever thanked her for the gift she gave me that day.
What power we have to speak into one another’s lives.
We all know people who are able to articulate what the rest of us merely think or feel about someone’s gifts, abilities, or uniqueness. They may be coaches, mentors, or people who work for Hallmark, but they can name what defies simple description in a manner that takes our breath away.
When my high school choir teacher associated me with elegance, she helped to create me. The word –and the experience of being associated with it–was formational to my development. The word encourage means to speak courage into, and I can’t get over what force that implies. Like a magical process that infuses the receiver with enchanted and mysterious potential.