Overcoming Adversity In My Life

Georgia O’Keefe once said, “to create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage”. Finding the will and determination to continue creating, whatever the medium may be, does take a certain amount of will. This is especially true when facing adversity. Never, have I experienced this phenomena so readily and completely than has been demonstrated by my father. Dad is a pianist. He started playing when he was four years old, and it has become so intertwined in his identity that I don’t know if he nor anyone else could fathom who he would be if he were not spending his time behind the keys. In my childhood, he diligently worked on his doctorate in piano performance while teaching piano at Waldorf College. This meant that I spent many Saturday afternoons dancing around the living room to Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, Rachmanonoff, and Lizt until he became impatient with my antics as he practiced, thereby relegating me to the inner sanctum of my bedroom. It seemed like he was constantly readying himself for a concert of some sort. This also meant that he was absent quite often, but I didn’t really mind. His performance career meant that, as a young teen, I had the opportunity to travel with he and my mother to a number of exotic places. In 1990 he was named a

In less than a decade from those moments, he could no longer teach nor drive. His eyesight had dwindled to less than 5%. This disease eats away at the periphery, giving the sufferer extreme tunnel vision, and that tunnel keeps gradually getting smaller and smaller until there is nothing left to see that is clear. He hid it well for a long time, but it was incredibly depressing for him. He developed a dependence on prescription pain killers--not because he was in great physical pain with his vision, but the emotional pain was too great. He was convinced that a blind pianist could not really play. He managed to tell himself all sorts of lies, and he sadly believed