The past two weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to live a good life. I’ve been thinking about it because my grandfather died. Death of a loved one, reminds us that death is not an abstract concept but rather a concrete experience in which one person that was very much there the day before is no longer there at all. It feels a bit the way an earthquake does. We take for granted that the ground does not move, and yet the ground moves. Reality is always changing for us, and we cannot fully predict what will happen next. I thought I would say goodbye to my grandpa, knowing that it was goodbye.  As it is, I gave him a rather cheery hug in August and that was the last time I saw him. There is so, so much we don’t know and can’t know about the future. I do believe in God, and I do believe that the final V-I cadence of our existence isn’t on our funeral day. However, the tricky thing about life is that we don’t have the score. We don’t know who comes in next, and we don’t always know who is playing harmony with us, we only have our own part, and sometimes we even have to make that up as we go. We can ask God questions, but that certainly doesn’t guarantee answers. Yesterday, in orchestra rehearsal, the conductor asked us to turn around our stands, to look around, and to play with each other. That felt more like life, than symphony playing usually ever does for me. The only way we get through life, and the only real way to get through a symphony, is by looking up and actually listening to the people around us. How do we survive the abstract? The unknown? The ambiguous? The unexpected? The shocking? The scary? By holding on to each other. It’s so tempting to just trudge along and play our own part the way we think it ought to be played, without regard for how others come to play. But, that’s not a symphony and that’s not life. In reflecting on my grandfather’s life, I’ve been thinking about his work-life balance. He worked exceptionally hard, and had such an incredible career. He made a difference through his diligence that can only truly be measured by what someone said in his retirement video: “people for generations will be drinking water out of projects that Lee Wimmer built.” He would have lived a wonderful and important life if that were all we could say. But that was only one half of Papa, and it’s not even the half I really knew. He was a shy man, and used his words sparingly. But he showed his love through actions, and he did those actions everyday. When I stayed with my Papa and Gram after my mission I remember thinking that I would be lucky if I could find a man anywhere near as good as him to marry. My grandmother had not been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s yet, but she had many of the symptoms, and her body had started deteriorating before his. He took care of her with exceptional love and exceptional service every single day. He cooked for her, he cleaned the house, he did the laundry, and he did this even before he retired. He was doing the work of two people, and he was doing it with patience like none I had ever seen. He took care of me when I visited, he took care of my siblings and cousins when they visited, he took care of my mom and my aunt and uncle and their spouses. He was always taking care of everyone. Of course, he changed throughout his life, and I think he was the most service oriented in that period, but I will never ever forget the example he gave for me of service and love. He taught me that you never have to say “I love you” for someone to know how much you love them. If you give someone a kiss on the cheek after doing a thousand small and simple tasks for them, it says the same thing. My grandpa was an “As You Wish” man. Just like Westley in the Princess Bride, every small task he did was an expression of love. Papa taught me that love is not one big proposal. Love is an everyday experience of service.

Earlier this week, my teacher Dimitri gave us a lesson in studio class about intonation. He taught us that there are three different kinds of intonation— Just, Pythagorean (melodic), and Well-Tempered— and that different kinds of intonation are right for different kinds of music. I’d heard the concept before (from him), but it hit me differently this time. I think that living a good life is a bit like being in tune. We might think there is only one way to be in tune, but there are actually a few different options. My Papa was at certain times very actively involved in church, and other times not. At one point he drank lots of Coca Cola and ate lots of chocolate, and at another point he ate tons of salad and barely any bread. But he was a good man the whole time. I think sometimes we get so stuck in the little minutia of what we think it means to be a good person, that we forget what really matters. I think what really matters at the end of the day, what God would care about the most, is how we treat people. I think that if we are “As You Wish” people, like my grandpa, we’re good people. We might not be perfect people, but we’re still good. I think God is like the audience member that cares more about where your heart is than whether you play your E in the just intonation style or in the Pythagorean style. That being said, I think being able to play with just intonation and being able to live a very clean life are both important. However, I think remembering that the greatest commandment is the one to love each other, and that the most important thing we can do with music is touch people’s hearts is so so important.

In other words, let’s forgive ourselves and remember that life is about playing together with heart, rather than playing perfectly.