Pablo
Casals, the famous Spanish cellist and conductor, preceded Yo-Yo Ma as
the world's preeminent cello virtuoso. Until his death on Oct. 22,
1973, his skills on the cello were unmatched in the music world, and he
had a long list of awards and honors to prove that.
Many people
do not know that Casals struggled desperately with stage fright
throughout his entire life. For a long time, nobody was better than
Casals, but every time he made his way to stage, his palms became
sweaty and his stomach tied up into knots.
I've listened to many
Casals recordings, and it is amazing to me that someone with such
flawless musical prowess could ever doubt himself.
While I am no Casals, either in music or writing, I recently found myself confronted by the same demons.
Recently,
I found myself struggling to wake up in the mornings and do my job of
being a journalist. I spent a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of
restless mornings staring at my ceiling fan, dreading the tasks that
were ahead of me.
There are a lot of things that go on behind
the scenes of journalism that people who haven't worked in the media
have no understanding of. Some of those things are wonderful and some
of those things I wouldn't wish on anybody.
For one thing, a lot
of people count on you, not just to do the work, but to get it done
accurately and quickly -- all the time.
It's not like a lot of
other jobs where you have an "in" box of tasks that can spill over into
the next day -- if necessary. Ninety-five percent of the time,
journalists operate in a state of now, and that's a lot of pressure.
There
are many people who call and ask you to look into something, but there
are many more who try to intimidate you into doing a story.
Occasionally, I'll get ten phone calls and a slew of e-mails from a
person with a particular ax to grind.
Those individuals attempt
to rake the coals of what they see as investigative journalism, never
realizing that we have to deal in absolutes, because the ultimate
responsibility -- and liability -- of reporting a story falls on our
shoulders, not theirs.
There's also the precarious tightrope that we walk with the public.
We
have to know our sources, but not get too friendly with them for the
fact that, at any time, we may have to write something unflattering
about them. The very things that we are most passionate about are
sometimes things that we can't have an opinion on, so that our fairness
is not called into question.
There is also the great expectation
that our writing will change the world for the better, somehow, when
often, all we can do as journalists is highlight the problems of
society.
Before I ever picked up a notepad and said that I
wanted to be a journalist, I was a musician. I went to college and got
a degree in performance, so I have a deep understanding of performance
anxiety as it applies to the music world.
I never imagined that as a journalist, I would be confronted by the same issues.
It makes me think of all the people in history who were confronted by things that were bigger than themselves.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was only a year older than myself when he
was asked to take over the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the 1950s. Solomon
of the Bible was chosen over all of his older brothers to lead the
entire kingdom of Israel. Nelson Mandela spent the majority of his
prime imprisoned, but started a revolution from his cell that led the
country out of nearly 50 years of Apartheid.
I am sure that all
of those great leaders had many restless nights, but they were all
chosen to lead because they had talents and gifts that applied to those
areas. While nothing I do here compares to what they did, perhaps I
have been put here for similar reasons.
It is easy to doubt
yourself and to fear making mistakes, but a very wise man once said
that an expert is only a person who has made every possible mistake in
a very narrow field.
Whenever I feel the walls of anxiety
closing in, I will remember that God has equipped me with the skills to
do all that lies in front of me.
Pablo
Casals, the famous Spanish cellist and conductor, preceded Yo-Yo Ma as
the world's preeminent cello virtuoso. Until his death on Oct. 22,
1973, his skills on the cello were unmatched in the music world, and he
had a long list of awards and honors to prove that.
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