PLACIDO DOMINGO(2)
When I previously wrote about Placido Domingo, the great Spanish tenor, I told the story of his voice cracking at an audition and how chance brought him back. Domingo is now nearing the end of a wonderful singing career, moving on by adding conducting and management (and even a little piano playing) to his repertoire. I've always felt privileged whenever I could hear him sing live and I've known for sometime that every time I hear him could be the last time. In December, his voice failed him in one of his farewell appearances at La Scala in Milan and he had to stop performing briefly. Later, he returned, to thunderous applause from the notoriously difficult La Scala audience, and completed the performance, albeit in weakened condition. Domingo admits to being 60, old for a singer, so weakness is no surprise. What I think is wonderful is that he finished the performance, even though he was less than his best, even though it would have been excused if he decided to return to his hotel, even though his reputation would not suffer if he gave up, even though the emotional distress he felt must have been great.
There are many lessons to be learned from this incident. First, and most obviously, is that a real professional, a real great man, never gives up if it's possible to complete the job. No matter how he feels, no matter how disappointed he is in the inevitable effects of aging, no matter how tempting it is to give up, he does what he commits to do. If he agrees to do something, he does. This is something we can all do. If we say we'll do something, we must do it, we must give our all to do it, we must not give up. No matter what the circumstances, if we say we'll do something, we must do whatever it takes to complete the task. This applies to the small things, such as saying we'll pick up something from a store for a friend, and to the big things, such as saying we'll be there for someone in a time of need. We might fail, we might do less than our best at some times, but we must do everything humanly possible to meet our commitments. We can't forget, we can't find it inconvenient to do what he promised, we can't excuse ourselves by putting the task off to another day, we must do what we say we'll do. If we don't, we're failing another person and we're failing ourselves. If we don't, we make ourselves worse in the eyes of other people and in our own eyes. Pride alone should keep us moving, enable us to put forth our best efforts to keep our promises.
Another important lesson is that we must do our best to recognize weakness and match our promises to our capability. That is, if we begin to see that we've overcommitted we must gradually and gracefully withdraw from commitments so we can keep our promises. Domingo has been slowly moving towards retirement for some time so he must see that his (great) powers are failing him, that it's time to avoid disappointment to his fans and himself by gradually slowing down, by passing the torch to younger singers. It's a hard thing but age and circumstances do change our abilities, no matter how much we wish it wasn't so, no matter how much we'd like to go on forever. And, by the way, we can overcommit even at the height of our powers. It does no one any good to promise more than we can deliver.
A final lesson we can draw from Domingo's experience is that people will credit effort, appreciate good traits, even if we're unhappy with our performance. The audiences we all deal with every day, just like opera audiences, understand effort and give it applause, even when the result is not perfect, even when we're not at our best, even though, looking at our performance objectively, we may be disappointed. And, if we do our best, we can hold our heads up and be proud of our performance, we can receive cheers from our audiences, no matter how it turns out. Doing our best is all we can do. We need never be ashamed of ourselves if we do do our best.
Meet commitments, make only those commitments we can expect to fulfill and do our best. That's a pretty good recipe for being good people. We can be proud and other people will applaud.
1-28-02
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