Leaning Into the Changes

I am practicing my region etudes with my flute teacher and quite frankly, I am losing my mind. In Texas, the region etude season is marked by repetition—we are assigned three pieces to play in our audition, and the next three months are spent perfecting the music. I finish playing one of the pieces and it’s perhaps the first time out of at least 300 play-throughs that I did not miss a single note. I’m quite proud of myself and look towards my teacher, eagerly expecting her approval.

            She hesitates. “That was ok,” she begins as my face uncontrollably droops into a frown. “But next time, remember to lean into the changes in the music, not just the notes”. At first, I was confused by her words, but over the rest of the lesson, I began to understand what she had meant. I was hyper-focused on hitting every note in my performance, rather than executing the changes between them or paying attention to how one note transformed into another. This is an abstract concept, but it’s a subtlety that sets apart the master musicians from the rest. This is partly why a robot playing the piano (ignoring the changes and the relationships between the notes) sounds stilted compared to an actual human being.

            The realization to lean into the music of change was meaningful to me both as a musician and as a student of medicine. A common mindset among physicians is to look ahead at the next part of the journey. Even as I start week 3 of medical school, we are already discussing the daunting and perilous trials called the Step Exams that we will undergo at the end of our second year. It feels like I haven’t even had a chance to process that I am no longer an undergrad and that I’ve moved several hundred miles away to a place I’ll call home for the next four years. I need to make a more conscious effort to appreciate the changes in my life right now before eyeing the difficult years ahead with anticipation.

            In recent weeks, this idea has taken on yet another meaning for me. In the wake of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, our country faces a “racial reckoning”. While it has affected us all, the COVID-19 crisis has disproportionately affected black and brown communities across America. As a nation, we are reevaluating the systems that govern us and uncovering the injustices of the past and present. We are learning and speaking out to incite change.

“A century from now, when almost all of us are dead, if we don’t act with urgency and boldness, I can only imagine what our descendants will be saying about us. How could we allow the evil of racial inequity to live another hour?”

-Ibram Kendi, author

            But it seems like sometimes the march for change is slow. There is much left to be done to address the systemic issues that affect BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). It can be tempting to abandon hope and make the best out of the status quo, but as my flute teacher reminds me, the music is about leaning into the change. Let’s work for change—now. Whether through education, policy, protest, or having tough conversations, there’s a role for each one of us. Noted writer and scholar Ibram Kendi writes in a piece in the Atlantic that “a century from now, when almost all of us are dead, if we don’t act with urgency and boldness, I can only imagine what our descendants will be saying about us. How could we allow the evil of racial inequity to live another hour?” Kendi goes on to describe “patience” as an ugly word for those suffering in an oppressive system.

            For a physician, leaning into change is vital—many of the patients you treat will have been impacted by a system built against them. It’s up to you to understand this and fight for them—now, not later. Frankly, I don’t consider myself an activist or an expert of any sort. But I have learned that by leaning into change rather than hiding in the comfort of the status quo, anyone can make a world a difference.