Compensate

I’ve always been slower than the average bear – not overtly talented and not “rocket-scientist” smart.   

So I’ve had to compensate – and sometimes over-compensate – to make a decent run at life.   

While I loved music, I never learned to “read” more than one note at a time and had to memorize anything more complicated.  [My piano teacher had compassion on me and would play FOR me the pieces I was to have under my belt for the next piano lesson.  After hearing them, I would go home and practice them “by ear”, knocking out any errant notes one-at-a-time.]  So after seven “superior” ratings in American Federation of Music Clubs piano competitions, I gravitated to trumpet and vocal music.  Even so, I realized early that a career in music was not a viable option.  So I turned to science.  [There was so much less competition!] 

Here, the going was also a one-note-at-a-time engagement.  But memorization was less meaningful and less rewarding than understanding, so I worked particularly hard at understanding.  I “compensated” by studying diligently and learning to “read between the lines” (called “critical thinking” in some circles).  Consequently, I wasn’t well versed in ungainful engagement and trivial pursuits ... never learned the finer arts of Gin Rummy, Poker, pool, pinball, Jeopardy! or most other gratuitous “pass-time” activities; never knew of Peter Falk until he died in 2011.  

In sports, I wasn’t particularly outstanding either.  But I compensated by never missing a practice or game, by seeking coaching advice, by practicing on my own unscheduled time, by supporting the efforts of “star” players, by assisting underclass players, and by being as formidable an opponent as I could be in practice scrimmages.  

Spoiler Alert:

If you’re not in an overtly competitive environment, your uncompensated liabilities may not be all that apparent.  But the scoreboard is no less aggressively tallying up “points”. 

Point to Ponder:

It seems more noble, honest, candid, honorable and irreproachable to claim that who we are and how we are is more important and more than sufficient for all practical and probable purposes, and that to try to be anything more or different – as in having to compensate for simply being ourselves – is inauthentic.  However, there IS a big difference between being our authentically best selves and being our authentically worst or most recalcitrant selves …

and who neither wants nor needs an “Edge”?

We all want to be “special”. 

But we are what we are until we become what we’re capable of becoming. 

And sometimes we are our own worst enemy.   

“There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us,

that it ill behooves any of us to claim the ‘moral high ground’

over any of the rest of us."

Adapted

from

James Truslow Adams

With that much latitude, we can all better ourselves in SOME way at SOME thing. 

Summation

The biggest rewards in life go to those who make the best of whatever they’ve got; don’t “short” yourself by simply being your effortless self … be your BEST, totally invested self, and learn early how to compensate for your liabilities.  Quartermaster 

“’ … though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am … My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought [the] battle.’” Mr. Valiant for Truth in “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan