A Good Question

When I was teaching orchestration, we would have a “play day” for each project. Students would provide a Sibelius (music notation software) file, the class would listen, and we would offer comments. I would sometimes make edits or revisions in a project to demonstrate how a change or two might improve it.

One day, as I started to close a file we had been working on, this message popped up: “Would you like to save changes to Julie Banks?” (not her real name) Julie had named the file after herself, not the piece or the project. I asked Julie whether she wanted to keep my changes and after she agreed, I saved the file.

Then I remarked, “Well, that was a first-class pedagogical question.” Some looked at me skeptically. “Since most of you are music education majors, it’s worth thinking about. What if at the end of each semester the teacher is asked, ‘Would you like to save changes to ____,’?” I filled in a few names. “Would you decide to keep the changes or not? Would you be able to judge whether they were changes for the better? Would you be willing to say, yes, so-and-so made a lot of progress and is now a better person after working with me, or would you say, nah, I don’t think so?”

There was a little laughter, but I think overall the class took my hypothetical questions seriously. Of course, in real life, we can’t choose whether to save the changes we make in another person. We just make them, for better or worse. Our interactions with others make changes, good and bad, whether we want them to or not. In “The Weight of Glory,” CS Lewis asserted, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

It seems to me, both spiritually and practically speaking, “do you want to save changes to ___?” is a good question, even if we don’t believe in a higher power. Students should ask it of their teachers and teachers should ask it of their students. Workers should ask it of managers and managers should ask it of workers. Spouses should ask it of each other. We should ask it in all our relationships. “Do you really want to save the changes you’ve made to me?” “Do I really want to save the changes I’ve made to you?” Sometimes we may want a do-over. I’d suggest if we really don’t want others to save our changes most of the time, we need to do some work on ourselves.