Choose one chair
If I were to prepare a bucket list, listening to Luciano Pavarotti sing live would have been on it. And I was extremely privileged to experience this in one of his last live performances in Pretoria shortly before his death.
What made Pavarotti so incredible and universally recognized and loved? I am certainly no opera fan, I very rarely attend concerts and seldom even buy CD’s and yet I was moved to tears by his music.
Besides his obvious initial talent, it turns out that there was a focus and dedication in his life that concentrated all his energies and passion into his music.
A story from his youth will illustrate this. Although he studied to be a teacher, even enrolling at teachers college, his own father had introduced him to music, urged him to develop his voice and encouraged him to study under a professional tenor.
When Pavarotti graduated from teachers college, he asked his father whether he should be a singer or a teacher. His father replied, ‘Luciano, if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair.’
It took him seven years of study before he had a professional appearance and an additional seven years before reached the Metropolitan Opera, but Luciano Pavarotti’s decision to choose one chair for his life meant that he focused his energy to develop his skill into something absolutely world class, something that could reduce cynical people to tears.
We can all do more than one thing. We can dabble in more than one business or profession and split our attention. Most of us do this because we are running scared. But we cannot excel, we cannot be world class, we will never be exceptional nor wealthy if we do not focus our attention on just the one thing.
‘Luciano,’ my father replied, ‘if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair.’ “I chose one. It took seven years of study and frustration before I made my first professional appearance. It took another seven to reach the Metropolitan Opera. And now I think whether it’s laying bricks, writing a book–whatever we choose–we should give ourselves to it. Commitment, that’s the key. Choose one chair.”
Luciano Pavarotti
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“I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” can be ordered from any book store. The distributor is Redline books and they can be contacted on christopher@redlinebooks.co.za or 021 557 2146. Charlotte Kemp is available to speak on the subject of “I’m Not Afraid of the F Word” to entrepreneur groups or the subject of “The Art of Failure” to corporate groups.
