Asserting Yourself for Optimal Experience

The Music program in Term 4 is enormous, as not only do our students present the bulk of the year’s work in varied and wonderful concerts, but we also prepare the calendar of events for the following year, including booking external venues and this year having many creative discussions about the contribution of the Music Department in next year’s 120th School Anniversary!

It would be fair to say that students, parents and staff alike had a very full and rewarding Term 3, but the fast pace of modern life does require us to question the sense of it all from time to time. Part of my ‘light’ holiday reading was a book called Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008). It opens with “this book summarizes, for a general audience, decades of research on the positive aspects of human experience – joy, creativity, the total involvement with life I call Flow.” Czikszentmihalyi’s introduction comments “Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness. While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal – health, beauty, money, or power – is valued only…because we expect that it will make us happy.”

What Czikszentmihalyi ‘discovered’ was “happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person.

Czikszentmihalyi continues by explaining “contrary to what we believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times – although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities and challenges to expand themselves. Such experiences are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur. The swimmer’s muscles might have ached during his most memorable race, his lungs might have felt like exploding, and he might have been dizzy with fatigue – yet these could have been the best moments of his life.”

In speaking with members of the Mathematics faculty recently I know from their sheer passion for the ‘beauty’ of numbers, they know what Flow is too. Flow – the state in which people are so involved in an activity nothing else seems to matter – the experience itself is so enjoyable people will do it even at great cost – for the sheer sake of doing it.

We know the vast majority of our students understand this state, albeit in most cases subconsciously. The School is very proud of its rowers, for example, and we appreciate the enormous time, effort and commitment from the girls on top of their other classroom and co-curricular work. The Years 7 and 8 students in Suessical Jr have rehearsed after School for two nights a week throughout Term 3, on top of their normal schedules, and these girls look forward to bringing you their artistry early in Term 4. It would be interesting to ask the girls with exemplary attendance after their performances whether they felt they had achieved optimal performance, more so than those who were half-hearted in their attendance.

Throughout our Music programs we endeavour to provide students with the opportunity to stretch themselves and experience the joy of Flow. Our Music curriculum ensures a very large percentage of our students learn a musical instrument and while most learn at School, some learn privately, and of all of those, it is rare a girl does not wish to be a part of a voluntary ensemble in the School. For those girls who prefer to learn their instrument as a private pursuit, we understand this also, and seek to continually encourage these girls to speak to a staff member about ways they can share their Music with the School community.

We know parents of our students work extremely hard to encourage the girls in both their academic and co-curricular pursuits, whether they be School or non-School related. Not all activities will be ‘easy’ but your support of the School as we encourage your daughters to stretch themselves is greatly appreciated.

Mrs Jenny Mathers
Head of Music