I’ve been sewing a bunch of patches onto my son’s Scouting BSA shirt the last couple of days – new rank patches, new leadership role, new patrol name, etc. It got me to thinking about the unseen stitching in the shirt.
I think I did a pretty nice job of making the patches look really presentable when he’s wearing the shirt; but if you were to turn it inside out, you’d see a web of crazily-patterned stitches. That’s perfectly normal, to be expected. There’s a lot of unseen complexity that goes into making a sewing job look clean and presentable.
There’s a lot of unseen complexity to the work choral conductors do, too. For every well-performed piece in concert, think about the crazy strategies, side-tracks, diversions, and unexpected discoveries that led to the performance.
That’s how we want it, most of the time: clean, presentable, with all the complexity and hard work tucked away in the rehearsal room. But there is beauty to that complexity – on the inside of my son’s shirt, and in the music we perform. If we never take a moment to appreciate it, there’s a risk of it going unnoticed and unappreciated.
Take a minute to think about unseen complexity in your work today. The stitches no one will ever see but that hold the whole thing together.