Sixth Former Sean DeMieri, of Jamestown, RI, addressed the School community at Church Assembly on Thursday, April 21. Sean spoke of how he has learned while at Portsmouth Abbey that it is okay to make mistakes; in fact, doing so is an essential part of learning and growing as a person.
The full transcript of Sean's talk follows.
I have always been terrified of making a mistake. Well, that and then also spiders. When I was told I would be giving a Church Talk, my immediate reaction was fear that I would somehow mess up, that I'd somehow fail at something which wasn't even graded. My grandmother once gave me a bowl and a pitcher of syrup. She then told me, "put the syrup in the bowl"; a simple task for most, but for me, a nightmare. I could not mess this up, so I ran through my head every possible way I could accomplish this task. I poured syrup into the bowl, I also put the pitcher itself in the bowl, and if I'd had the tools I would have bored a hole into the dish and filled that with syrup as well.
Third Form year, whenever I had to tell the dining hall servers what I wanted to eat, my most common response was, "What he (or she) just had, please." That way, at least I'd be getting something other people got, because somehow I had convinced myself there were right foods to get and wrong foods to get. Then came the next struggle of my daily life: picking a lunch table. I could never, ever, be the first person to sit down at a table. I recall once standing in the foyer for 10 entire minutes just so I could sit down second, at one of the "correct" tables. And then the third and final lunchtime struggle: somehow eating the so-called food.
From an early age I'd decided that I would learn the quote-unquote "proper" things to do, the ways to do everything right, and so I began to read, and read, and ask questions, many questions, much to my family's dismay. I tried to learn as much as I could about as many things as I was able to find. In essence, I took a rudimentary course on everything: from Art History to Etiquette to Zoology. There were always a few things, though, that, no matter how I tried, I could never remember or understand. I hated these things. Art (one of those words nobody can define), for example, was awful: no matter what I made, no matter what I drew, it always seemed that either somebody wouldn't like it, or somebody else's was simply better. When I was younger my coloring books looked as if a box of crayons had thrown up on the page, but over the years my doubts and fears changed my indiscernible blobs of color into single-shade drawings that never, ever, went outside the lines. Thinking outside the box was not an option for me; the box was my whole world, no more, no less. Soon after my art fiasco, however, came a new obstacle: music.
When I began piano, all I ever thought was how I could never play things correctly the first time around, but on YouTube everybody was perfect. People listened to perfect, so why would people want to listen to me? I took lessons for a short while in first grade, but these eventually stopped, and so I decided to read numerous books on music theory. My instructor always had me play classical music, which was, quite frankly, boring. And so I believed piano was likewise; boring, no more than "that instrument some deaf guy played a couple hundred years ago." I assumed pianos were meant only to play Beethoven's umpteenth symphonies. But then, I learned that jazz existed, and that pop and classic rock could be played on piano. Stuff I enjoyed, at last!
But not so fast, there was a catch: people actually knew the pieces I enjoyed. If I played something by Bach in the key of C instead of D nobody would notice, but if I played a pop song, and I messed up anywhere, people would immediately take note. Even if I played a C# where was written a Db, people could tell. A newfound level of terror set in, and if not for the support of my friends, I would've quit music then and there. I was in a jazz band with several of these friends, and they didn't care if mistakes were made. In fact, we all laughed about our mistakes. Piano finally became fun.
Friends, they are wonderful. They kept me playing through the eighth grade. Then came Portsmouth Abbey. A lot of people here were, and still are, better than me at the piano, but nobody cared. People didn't care how well you played a piano, they cared how well you were doing, how your life was going. They didn't care if I colored inside some box.
Third Form year I met George Sturges, the first individual to explain to me that everybody makes mistakes—well, the first person whom I had actually met (sorry, Miley Cyrus). Then, in Chamber Ensemble, I met Mr. Bentley, who in fact encourages mistakes. He showed me that mistakes are simply ways of learning what one needs to improve. With their help, and many others here, I have slowly learned that making choices means making mistakes, and that's okay.
Soon I will have to make a major life choice: which college I shall attend. Even up until the beginning of this year I would have been paralyzed by this fact; but now, I know that it's perfectly acceptable to pick just one way of putting syrup in a bowl; it's okay to color in an owl in green and purple; it's even all right to be the first person to sit down at lunch. The Abbey has prepared me well. I was once a young, scared 8th grader, too afraid to choose, well, anything. But I will now graduate a confident individual, unafraid of making mistakes, in fact, awaiting and embracing them in all of my endeavors.
For that, thank you.