Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach
The roar of the crowd seemed to envelop me.
I walked over to the grand piano and settled myself at the bench. Wiped the sweat from my forehead with my suit-jacket sleeve, placed my hands over the piano keys, and took a deep breath. Noticing my heart racing, I couldn’t help but wonder: How the heck did I get here?
I was onstage at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, sitting at a piano, surrounded by more than eighteen thousand people.
They were cheering. For me. A guy with no fingers who was hoping to inspire them to imagine what was possible in their lives by doing something seemingly impossible on his own: playing the piano.
I caught my breath, then spoke into the microphone with a laugh, warning the audience to lower their expectations for this musical interlude, and raised my damaged hands as the reason why.
With that, I took a deep breath and began to play.
The doorbell to our family home in St. Louis rang.
Mom, seated next to me at the kitchen table, went to answer the door.
With a few moments to myself, I looked up from my plate and glanced around. I was still getting used to all the changes in our home.
The sticky, worn, green linoleum that once covered our kitchen had been replaced and was now bright pink. The dark oak cabinets had been swapped for lighter, new ones; the orange countertop had been replaced with a fashionable shade of mauve. The mid-seventies fixtures had been exchanged for the newest fads of the late eighties. Reagan was in the White House, Springsteen was on the radio, and our kitchen was rocking.
Just nine years old, I sat in the kitchen of our renovated house trying to wrap my head around everything that had changed since the fire five months earlier.
It wasn’t just our kitchen that was different.
Our garage had been reduced to ashes; every room in the house had been damaged by flame, smoke, or water. My five siblings and parents had been forced into temporary housing for four months as our home was rebuilt.
I spent those months in the hospital, fighting for my life.
We were dealing with change in every aspect of our lives.
But my own life had changed the most.
Thick white gauze bandages covered nearly every part of my body. I looked like the odd love child of the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Don’t get me wrong—both are unforgettable characters, but few of us aspire to be their offspring.
The majority of the bandages covered thick red scars where my skin had mostly healed. Some of those wrappings, though, masked open, painful sores that hadn’t.
The wheelchair I sat in was an immense improvement over the months I’d spent tied down to a hospital bed, the practice at the time to minimize joint contractions as burned skin tried to fuse back together. Spending that much time motionless caused my muscles to atrophy. I struggled with basic mobility because scars had accumulated over my healing skin, rendering walking again a distant, improbable goal.
And then there were my hands. When I looked at where my fingers used to be, I saw gauze. The doctors had amputated my fingers on both hands down to the bottom knuckles.
I tried to avoid looking at my hands, because every time I did, I confronted a barrage of anxieties: How will I ever throw a baseball again? How will I be able to go back to school? If I can’t return to school, how will I ever get a job? Most discouraging, even at the age of nine, was the thought: No girl will ever want to hold my hand.
I was staring down at my hands as Mom reentered the kitchen. A few steps behind her I saw the unmistakable silhouette of Mrs. Bartello.
As Mom approached, I looked at her in shock and asked, “What is she doing here?”
She was our piano teacher.
None of the O’Leary kids wanted to see her enter our house. Because her appearance meant that whatever we were doing—watching TV, playing, studying—would have to stop, as our piano lessons were about to begin.
Although none of my siblings were wild about piano lessons, I hated them the most. I didn’t want to play the piano; I wanted to play baseball. It wasn’t concert halls where I imagined my talents taking me, but baseball stadiums. It wasn’t notes I wanted to hit, but fastballs.
I’d always dreamed of playing professionally for the St. Louis Cardinals. I just knew that one day I’d put on that uniform, take the field, and play for my beloved hometown team. Those were my dreams at age nine. Similar to the aspirations of other young children. We didn’t yet know to be realistic with our goals.
Yet even a child knows when it’s time to awaken to a grim reality. The fire had robbed me of that dream forever. I’d never hold a baseball. I’d never play for the Cardinals or wear the St. Louis uniform. Painful as that fact was, I took solace in one beneficial aspect of my injuries: at least I’d never have to take a piano lesson again. There is a silver lining to every cloud, people!
So why on earth was Mrs. Bartello here?
Mom approached my wheelchair, bent down, and released the brakes. She reversed my wheelchair away from the kitchen table and pushed me down the hallway into our family room.
“Mom, where are you taking me?”
My friend, I want you to take note of how she responded. Maybe jot it down somewhere. I recommend that you use her tactic with a student, spouse, child, or someone with whom you are having a disagreement.
She didn’t murmur a word.
Not a word.
Talk is cheap.
Instead, Mom humbly, bravely, lovingly pushed me away from the spot where I’d been stuck in the kitchen and moved me toward a new destination, a new perspective.
As she pushed me, I looked up and sought, one more time, an answer: “Mom?”
Silence.
She rolled me to the piano, relatched the brakes, and calmly told Mrs. Bartello she’d be in the kitchen if we needed anything. She then walked out of the room, stranding me alone with Mrs. Bartello.
This gentle piano teacher sat down and pulled the bench closer to me. She took a deep breath, put her arm around me, and told me how proud she was that I was finally home. She’d missed our lessons together, she said, and was excited for me to play the piano again. She added with a certainty that surprised me, “Okay. Let’s do this.”
Then, as if nothing had changed in my life in the five months since she’d last seen me, Mrs. Bartello pulled out the sheet music for a song I’d been learning for my mom. Back then, I had fingers but little desire to use them to play piano. That lack of desire remained and was a hurdle we’d have to leap over together. But, of course, now it was far from the only one.
Looking back, I am amazed that Mrs. Bartello, and my mother, had the audacity to think it was possible. How do you even begin to teach a young boy with no fingers to play the piano? Aren’t fingers a prerequisite?
I sat in that wheelchair, in front of the piano, on a morphine drip, with my hands wrapped in thick gauze resembling a boxer’s glove. And it gets worse.
My right arm had little muscle mass, making it almost impossible to lift; my left arm was strapped into an airplane splint at a 90-degree angle from my body.
I felt totally useless and utterly confused about what we could possibly do together.
But somehow, for some reason, Mrs. Bartello was undeterred.
She took out a pencil and a rubber band from her purse. She wrapped the rubber band around my right “glove,” binding the pencil to the end of my bandages. With this single pencil protruding from my right hand, Mrs. Bartello instructed me to begin playing the notes on that sheet of paper.
What followed was the longest thirty minutes of my life.
As I listlessly hit the piano keys with the pencil, I remember distinctly thinking: I hate my mom.
I could not believe she was making me take piano lessons in the condition I was in. The only good that came out of it was that eventually the lesson ended. At least I’d never have to do that again, I thought.
Which was true. Until the following Tuesday, when the doorbell rang again. Mrs. Bartello came back…and came back the Tuesday after that.
For five freaking years of Tuesdays!
Gradually, painfully, begrudgingly, note by note, a bewildered boy with no fingers, with ostensibly no chance of returning to life as it once was, learned to play the piano. First with a single pencil bound to the bandage on his right hand. Then one bound to his left. As the wrappings were removed, I learned to play with the tips of my knuckles and by rolling my palm, creating makeshift chords with the parts of my hands that remained.
Looking back on those Tuesdays, I realize that Mrs. Bartello and my mom weren’t simply teaching me the piano. They had no expectations that I’d perform at a recital or enter any competitions.
They were developing something more important than musical ability.
By releasing the brakes on my wheelchair and by pushing me toward a goal that seemed unattainable, by seeing potential and hope where any reasonable person would see only disability and despair, they delivered a message, without speaking a word, that I needed to hear and to heed.
John, this fire may have robbed you of your fingers. But it did not take your life! You will not act as if it has. You possess the power to do what today seems impossible. You will confront hurdles in your life. You will face difficulties. You will need to come up with innovative ways to overcome the challenges that lie ahead. Things will be different than we had planned. But in time, things will be better than you can even imagine.
That was a vital message that I needed to hear as a young boy, struggling with uncertainty and self-doubt, facing seemingly overwhelming physical limitations. It’s one I need to hear from time to time even today.
And I’m convinced it’s a message many of us would benefit from hearing.
Um, John, that has never happened to me, you point out. I’ve never sat at a piano with morphine coursing through my veins and bandages covering my body, staring at nubs that once were hands, wondering how the heck I was going to play a single note, let alone an entire song.
My friend, though the circumstances might look different, I believe that feeling of impossibility and being overwhelmed is something we’ve all faced at various times in our lives.
Maybe you were tasked with a new project at work but didn’t have the skill set needed, plus your plate was full with your everyday responsibilities. As the work piled up, as the pressure mounted, you sat staring helplessly at the piano keys and felt that overwhelming urge to give up.
Or maybe you found out you were pregnant again, in the midst of a season where you barely had enough energy, time, and money to keep yourself and your family going, let alone give birth to and take care of another baby. At a time that should have been joy-filled, you found yourself staring at your life, wondering how on earth you were going to get by.
Or go ahead and scroll through the headlines today. How can you not feel overwhelmed with the sobering stories of war, famine, layoffs, shootings, indiscriminate violence and prejudice that fill our news feeds, extract our joy, and leave us feeling hopeless, dismayed, depressed, as if there is nothing we can do to make anything better?
We all have moments in our lives when we feel like we are expected to play the piano without fingers! The question is, do you throw up your damaged hands and walk away from the piano, or do you find a new way to create your song, the one you were born to play?
Rather than shaking your head, giving up, and canceling the piano lesson, I invite you to reconnect with your sense of wonder that ignites the audacious belief that with enough creativity and determination, nothing is impossible.
I don’t mean “wonder” in the sense of something that inspires amazement and admiration. No, this wonder is far from passive. By wonder, I mean something we do. I’m talking about our ability to be curious, to inquire, to probe, challenge, and even doubt.
Our sense of wonder makes us question the way we’ve been doing things and encourages us to ask, Is there a better way?
Our sense of wonder allows us to stop taking every answer for granted and start questioning what we’ve been told.
Our sense of wonder permits us to once again become innovators, inventors, artists, and scientists.
Our sense of wonder invites us to remember that we have the power, if we choose to harness and focus it, to change the world.
That kind of belief, that kind of certainty, that kind of wonder can truly change everything.
It was a swelteringly hot day in Houston, Texas. The date was September 12, 1962. President John F. Kennedy was speaking in front of an audience of forty thousand people at Rice University.
Although it was only twelve days into the month of September, it had already been an eventful month. A 7.1-magnitude earthquake in Iran killed more than twelve thousand people. The entire world was on edge on the eve of what was to become known as the Cuban missile crisis. Global financial markets remained sluggish. The Supreme Court had just ordered the admission of the first African American student to the segregated University of Mississippi.
It was a time of turmoil and tension, frustration and fear. There were natural disasters, political protests, and cultural uprisings.
Sound familiar?
It was with this background that the president prepared to speak in Houston. John F. Kennedy knew what was in the hearts and on the minds of the American people. He understood they were feeling bewildered, nervous, lost, and unmoored. And he set before them that day a grand, compelling vision, a mighty goal.
A goal many thought impossible, if not outright lunacy.
It was a massive dream, one that would require all the best of America: collaboration, brains, innovation, and determination.
He set before us the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
In an unusually lengthy and poetic sentence, he reminded those listening of both the weight of the challenge and the solution to it.
But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun—almost as hot as it is here today—and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out—then we must be bold.1
It was an unprecedented vision.
A daunting task.
An impossible dream.
And yet before the decade ended, just as Kennedy had promised, Americans heard astronaut Neil Armstrong, upon stepping on the moon’s surface, announce, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
A couple of guys, strapped into a metal lunar module launched 240,000 miles away from earth, landed safely on the moon, bounced around a little while thanks to the lower gravity of the moon, planted a flag, grabbed some rocks, took some pictures, got back into their vessel and returned home safely. All with computing technology far inferior to that found in your old flip phone.
It seems impossible.
But they did it. When Kennedy urged America and Americans to be bold, he was saying that to accomplish this goal, we would have to throw out the rule book, put our boundless creativity, curiosity, and determination to the test, and keep at it relentlessly until we accomplished our goal.
We had to utilize our sense of wonder. The sense that doesn’t allow us to give up in the face of failure. The sense that is always seeking new solutions. The sense that prods us to ask questions, get curious, and dig deep to find the way.
This is how we make big moves and enact true change. We put our minds together and invite our sense of wonder to push boundaries, reject limits, and go where no one has ever gone before.
Regrettably, our government leaders today speak less of bringing people together to create something bigger than themselves and more about protecting what we already possess. Our focus as individuals seems to be less about how much we can accomplish together and more about getting through the day. Far more effort is spent guarding what we have than expanding what, and who, we could become.
Why have we stopped thinking differently, and aiming for the moon?
It’s because we’ve lost touch with our sense of wonder.
And it’s time to get reacquainted.
When you reawaken your sense of wonder, you’ll find yourself coming up with new ways of approaching old problems, reinvigorated by endless curiosity. You’ll break out of ruts and find yourself traversing new terrain. Yes, you’ll probably at times feel a bit uncomfortable. And that’s as it should be.
Because the decision to shoot for the moon demands we chart new paths. When it comes to moonshot thinking, the “same old, same old” will not do. We’ve got to cover new territory, invent new technology, see with new eyes, and do things differently than we’ve done them before.
So how do we do it? How do we get back in touch with our sense of wonder?
By asking five deceptively simple questions.
These five questions were an essential part of your vocabulary as a child. They lead us to do more, be more, ask for more, and in doing so, innovate more. They elevate the relationships you have, the work you do, and the life you lead. They transform the way you view your past, celebrate your present, and create your future.
Doesn’t that sound like a worthy adventure to undertake? Well, turn the page and learn the first question that reawakens the desire to find a new, different, better way forward.