Anna auditioned for the junior high "elite" choir a few weeks ago. Despite her knowledge that rare was the day that 7th becoming 8th grade girls made the choir, I could tell it was a bitter disappointment for her when the list came out and her name was not on it.
He frustration was justifiable. She'd scored near-perfect on sight-singing, intonation, tonal memory... I, too was a bit miffed by the system myself, realizing that her exclusion from this choir was merely a result of the fact that there were enough 8th(turning 9th) grade girls who were qualified enough (but not better than her) to make the cut. There simply weren't enough seats for 7th grade girls.
This bothers me a bit. I indulged her by agreeing that the system is flawed(if you're going for fairness) that the best man should win, not the one who was good enough but whose last shot it was. It's not an accurate reflection of reality-I would hope that my kids would be able to see their efforts at developing their talents reap deserved results, instead of having their hopes dashed because a quota had to be filled. But, then again, maybe that IS reality these days.
Gone are the days where you could audition behind a partition and make the top ten in regional Texas choir based on merits alone as I had in ninth grade. It is public school, after all, not a paid gig.
After agreeing with her concerns that several girls had likely made the choir despite a lack of competency solely because of their grade level, I reminded her to put herself in their shoes. What if SHE had invested in two years of junior high choir only to be turned away from the choir to which she'd aspired simply because the 7th grade girls that year happened to be better than her. That would seem unfair, too. Empathy can go a long way in altering one's feelings toward a seemingly unjust situation.
The reality is, sometimes things aren't fair. We are all subjected to disappointments and injustices. We all must, at one time or another, suffer unecessarily at the hands of an unbiased individual. And we all can choose to pick ourselves up, dust off the bitterness, and realize that all the huffing and puffing in the world won't alter the situation. Our task is simply to learn from it. And to choose joy.
