Lessons from a Desk

It's hard to climb out of a hole you don't know you're in.

Last night my Chorale rehearsal got kicked out of our normal practice space. Our director was annoyed, but I was actually quite glad because it meant that I got to sit at a desk instead of a normal chair. I love to have a desk. It means I don't always have to hold my music up with my arms, which is especially nice since some of it is copies that I un-stapled and it's nice to set down the pages we're done with. And with a desk, I can put my water bottle, or the tea I make at break, right there in front of me, instead of on the floor. And there was a nice little groove for my pencil so it didn't get lost.

I like having a desk. And the desk I chose last night was lovely. It was a pretty rose color and the top was nice and broad, plenty of space for all my stuff. I like to keep my stuff handy. Did I mention that I like to sit at a desk for choir rehearsal?

But my desk did cause me a few moments of anxiety last night, which turned out to be very instructive. I'm always on the end of my row anyway, but in between when I chose my desk and when the rest of everybody actually formed their rows and sat down (Strangely, most of them preferred regular chairs. Weirdos.), my desk ended up being rather far away from the next person in the row. So as we were warming up (standing up, of course), I was occasionally tugging on my lovely desk, trying to bring it into the fold a little farther.

This was mostly working, except for the slightly too-loud squeak it made. Except then something happened. It felt to me like I'd pulled too hard on some part of the desk and yanked something out of something else. And suddenly, my heretofore lovely desk had become a desk that doesn't sit evenly. It now had a short leg. A dramatically short leg. There was no way I was going to be able to sit in this desk without being completely distracted by the wobbling.

As we continued to warm up, I was terribly distracted, occasionally leaning down to try to figure out what part of the desk I had knocked out of kilter. I pulled. I pushed. I pulled and pushed simultaneously. It continued to wobble. Dramatically. My mind was racing with every mechanical gene I have, tring to figure out what sort of injury I had inflicted on the desk and how to fix it. Nothing was working. I had killed the loveliness of the desk. It's actually rather amusing how upset I was, not that I let it show. After all, it was clear no one else understood how great desks are.

Finally, we were done warming up, and it was time to sit down. For some reason that I no longer recall -- maybe I needed to get my pencil out of my purse, maybe I wanted my scarf out of my coat pocket, whatever it was -- I removed the items that were obscuring my view of the back leg that was on the far side of the desk from where I had been standing.

And I discovered that the leg I hadn't been able to see was sitting in a three-inch dent in the floor!

There was nothing wrong with the desk. All I had done was drag it into a hole. So I pulled it out of the hole, and the loveliness was restored. We had a great relationship the rest of the night.

But just think if I hadn't had occasion to look at the problem differently. I might have ended up sitting in a regular chair, totally wasting the opportunity of having rehearsal in a classroom. No, really, that's not the point. You know the point. Sometimes seeking out a fresh perspective is the most important thing you can do. But amazingly, we usually only do that by accident.