There are a lot of things that happen because we make them happen. The tomato and cucumber plants in my backyard didn’t sprout, grow, and produce fruit on their own – they were carefully cultivated over generations, sprouted by a local organic farmer, and nurtured in my garden for the whole summer.
That kind of work is the work we associate with teaching: careful nurturing, pruning, cultivating to produce adults with good character, strong values and principles, and the skills to contribute to society.
But the leaves fall on their own. I could send my kids up into our maple trees to remove all the leaves as they turn brown, so we can rake them up, but it would be a tremendous effort that wouldn’t significantly affect the outcome – the leaves will fall on their own, when the time is right.
I think there are things that just fall into place in our development, too. Early on it’s things like walking, talking, potty training, but later on, too – I think that with maturation and development, we sometimes just have to wait until the time is right.
And even in our ensembles, there are things that happen over time. There are aspects to my ensembles (the ensemble’s tone, group intonation, team spirit) that I know will be second nature later in the year. I can push hard on them and maybe have them solid a little earlier, but even if I ignore them to focus on other things they will arrive in time.
Some things I do like to push a little: team building is a great way to take a skill that would develop over months and build it quickly over a weekend retreat. On other things, I wonder whether my time would be better spent ignoring the struggle and focusing my attention on areas where I know my effort will grow results, trusting that in time, the leaves will fall.