I believe in faith, and that most everything happens for a reason.
In 2013, probably during the wintertime, a local opera company was well into preparing their production of L’elisir d’amore by Gaetano Donizetti. The company, West Bay Opera, had asked our choir to sing with them just a couple seasons ago. In L’elisir d’amore, there is a character named Dr. Dulcamara who is a wandering merchant selling medicinal tinctures, and travels with a young boy assistant. So when they needed someone to play that role, they decided to ask our choir for an actor, and our director decided to ask me.
I was absolutely mortified.
I don’t actually remember why I was so apprehensive to the idea, but I do recall crying and throwing fits to avoid it at all costs. It wasn’t that I didn’t like opera, since I had never seen any at the time. I was simply irrationally afraid of jumping into this thing, this commitment, without knowing what it was at all, or what it entailed.
Somehow though, my parents got me to try it out for a spell, and I ended up in Palo Alto after dinnertime and homework. We walked into the strangest room I’d ever been in- a carpeted rehearsal room with masks and unworldly props lining the walls. But the important part were the people: much older than me, extremely nice to me, and very, very good at singing. This was especially true with Dr. Dulcamara (played by the spectacular Igor Vieira), who I knew of as the guy in the same costume as me, being boisterous and loud backstage- a friendly, heartily laughing bard. The makeup artist called my character his “mini-me.” He instructed me to bow with him and to give him a high-five afterward, and schemed to change his words in a scene for the last show. It was incredibly harmless, and just wonderful. It wasn’t some stagefright-laced hell, but rather a weird and mystical wonderland that I got to experience, some number of nights per week.
Things have changed now though, I’ve been less afraid of new commitments, jumping into unknowns left and right. Sometimes it all works out- taking classes at a unique technical school, learning a new genre of instrument for school marching band- but sometimes it ends in my detriment, like with a Japanese student exchange program that constantly ate away at my sanity with fundraising scheduling and existing musical audition stress. In every situation, I asked why not- and afterwards, reaped the benefits and faced the minimal consequences. Most of the time, it ended in just dropping that activity later, and feeling a bit of guilt, but more so a liberating relief.
A friend of mine once outlined a way of thinking very different to what I was used to. They believed that God had intention behind everything, and because of that, everything was always going to be okay. Everything that occurs happens exactly in the way that it is meant to be. I think the tiny Dulcamara didn’t believe in that. But even now, when I’ve grown since then, I’ve morphed that faith into my own life. I don’t believe in God. I do believe in faith, whether that be nature, inanimate objects, in people and my peers. I have faith that they’ll make things turn out in exactly the way that it is meant to be.