So Close, Yet So Far

When it comes to aerial competitions, there is value in simply taking part rather than in the result, and there is also value in the growth that comes through competing itself, including all the training leading up to the event. I am almost entirely of that view myself, and in the first place, I never practiced aerial silks for the sake of competitions.

But if I think about piano competitions, which belong to an equally artistic world (and one I am somewhat more familiar with), the reality is that competitions are also highly commercial arenas for identifying future professionals, with little concern for anyone’s personal story of growth. For a little-known performer, winning can mean something far more practical than honor alone: it can change what kinds of work and opportunities become available afterward. A difference of a few votes or a few points becomes a difference in ranking, and that difference can go on to change a performer’s career, the people they meet, and eventually the course of their life.

And of course, there are people who fall just short. (For the record, I am not talking about myself.)
If they had fallen far short, perhaps it would be easier to let go. But in reality, some people come painfully close, with only the smallest distance left between them and the recognition of their talent. And that tiny difference is often not even caused by a lack of talent or effort. It may of course come from a minor injury or simply not feeling well that day, but also from luck, timing, the tastes of the judges, differences of school or tradition, or even things completely unrelated to the performance itself, such as a tragedy in the family or some mess they made in their private life. However talented someone may be, there are lives in which the final door simply never opens, and when it is this close, everything can look all the more hazy, almost unreal.

But the fact that someone never received that glory cannot erase the height they had already reached, and the poetry of the performance, the brilliance of its colors, the exquisite control, the breathtaking beauty that was truly there cannot be rewritten by votes or scores.

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And the reverse is also true. No matter how much glory someone may win through a beautiful aerial performance, that will not solve every other problem in life. You may trace one perfect line onstage, but once the lights go down, you cannot leave the problems of real life behind in the wings and head home without them.

There have been plenty of cases in which even winning an international piano competition did not bring happiness to the winner, and the brilliance of the stage and the reality of everyday life are not always the same thing; at times, the distance between them feels vast, desolate, impossibly far.

In other words, life is difficult for everyone, and talent or ability in aerial will not solve everything, but if there is one case in which I think I can still say with confidence that you will be all right, it is when there is someone beside you. The problems in front of you may still be there tomorrow in exactly the same form, but if someone stays beside you as you face them, someone who can solve none of it and stays anyway, the world does not collapse.

It is painful not to be able to give someone the future worthy of their talent, the future in which they could have stood on much larger stages. But you can remember how strong they were, and when even they can no longer believe in themselves, you can remember the beauty that no score or ranking ever managed to contain.

You do not have to solve every problem someone you love is facing. If you want to save them, what matters more than solving the problem itself is simply staying beside them, even if the words between the two of you have already been worn away to nothing.