“How is it possible to stick with all that when you live with so much physical pain?”
“I do have my grumpy days,” he assures me, “but as a kid I had the nickname Happy Schlappi. Maybe I just tried to live up to that label. Life is hard, whether it hits you at fourteen or fifty, but the biggest difference for me is finding the things to be grateful for. We have so much to be grateful for—the beauty around us, our families, our bodies, our friends, our dogs. It comes from my mother, to be able to see the good in all situations. Even after I was shot, I was focusing on what I had left instead of what I had lost. I’m thankful I’m alive. My heart was on an in-beat when I got shot or else I’d be dead. My mom still loves me. God still loves me. My arms work. It gets harder. I live in a lot of physical pain. It hurts, and I’m not going to deny taking a painkiller once in a while, but sports have been good for that, because when I move around, it takes all those nerve-ending pains. What it comes down to is, I’m not in control of my pain, but I’m in charge of the way I react to it.”
Mike’s determination and positivity helped him to achieve so much, from surviving in the hospital to learning how to get over a curb in a wheelchair. It’s interesting because when I first met him, to me his story seemed to be about getting shot and then going to the Olympics three times. I mean, come on! That’s a great story. But now that I’m here, talking with Mike the human being as opposed to Mike the hero-on-paper, it seems to me that getting over the six-inch curb required a different kind of heroism.
Still, the Olympics are a pretty big deal, so I feel compelled to ask about that, and when I do, Mike’s face lights up.
“I just love sports. I was a basketball guy, and I was supposed to be a star basketball player in high school and college. Now I’m in a wheelchair and disabled, but then when I found out they had wheelchair basketball in the Olympics, I wondered, Is that like Special Olympics? No, this is the real Olympics, but for people with physical disabilities, not intellectual disabilities. That got into my blood. I started playing, and I became good at it; I tried out for the national team. I was on four different Olympic teams. Got a couple medals. It was good. When they put the gold medal around my neck in Seoul in ’88, I was the youngest on the team, and I just started crying because it’s like, Wait a minute. I was lying in a hospital bed ten years ago. My dad, my coach, thought I’d never play sports again, and now I’m doing more than high school, more than college. I was able to take this thing that seemed so negative and, with the right perspective and framing it properly, it became a good thing.”
“A great thing,” I remind him. “You are someone who has achieved greatness. You’ve gone to the Olympics. You’ve been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. People might look at you and think you are the exception. What would you say to someone going through a difficult time if maybe they don’t see themselves as exceptional?”
“You’re okay. You’re normal. You’re real. This is an opportunity. Let me rephrase that.” He thinks it over for a moment before he clarifies, “This is an opportunity to grow. To learn about your character. To go to other people for help. To rip down the wall around you. It’ll be hard, and that’s okay. You’ll have feelings, and that’s okay. Always believe, always know that you can get through this with help. With help. Not alone. That’s too hard. We need help.”
The interview came to an end, and I think Mike’s two dogs were happy to see the back of me and Chloé, knowing that their little tormentor was leaving. But my conversation with Mike left me feeling uplifted and empowered, like I could accomplish anything—including wrangling a toddler and an infant. Mike is that example of making up his mind to do something and then, no matter what, finding a way to accomplish it. Mike showed me that whatever our circumstances, we need to see ourselves headed in a positive direction, pursuing a positive goal, no matter where we are in life. I think I knew this already, but to hear it articulated this way helped confirm to me that we still can be headed in a positive direction even if we aren’t happy. Even when we’re struggling.
I suppose I could try to make a parallel here about my bike ride, and refusing to stop or give up, but really, the main area where I set goals for myself—and strive to achieve them—is my music. It’s something that allows me to measure my progress. I love that feeling of falling in love with a new piece I’ve never heard before, getting the music, practicing it until I’m sick of hearing it, learning the nuances in the music, the subtle melodies interwoven throughout the work, and finally being able to perform it at a high level. Either I can play it beautifully or I’m working toward playing it beautifully.
I began playing the harp when I was only five years old. It seemed like a magical instrument, the instrument of angels. When I first started, I would imagine myself in a beautiful gown onstage performing to a large audience. My first teacher taught me so much, until I was eighteen, to be precise. I grew up learning the Suzuki Method, which taught me to really listen to the music. My mom would buy a CD of the piece I was supposed to learn, and I would listen to it over and over and over. From an early age, this taught me to appreciate music, and made me want to listen to classical music.
I remember finding a CD of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and racing up and down the halls listening to it, just feeling the music and trying to dance around to it. I remember when I learned the first piece that I considered advanced: Carlos Salzedo’s “Chanson dans la Nuit” (Song in the Night), with its tumbling glissandos and built-in percussion that make the most of both the strings and the wooden frame of the instrument. I really thought I had achieved greatness. I competed in small local competitions and felt so excited when I won. Outside my teacher’s studio, when people would say, “Introduce yourself and tell us something about yourself,” I would always say, “My name is Elizabeth Smart, and I play the harp.” I felt so special and proud saying that. Rarely did anyone else say they played the harp. Before I was kidnapped, I felt that my harp playing defined me, in and outside of school and within my family. That was what I did. I know that my mom can attest to that because she sat through every lesson I ever had until I turned sixteen and she finally decided that I was old enough to go by myself. My mom probably felt like her life was raising her children and harp. She didn’t play, but she was my biggest fan and motivator.
During those long months of captivity, I wasn’t allowed to speak of the harp, but my captors couldn’t keep me from thinking about it, dreaming of the day I’d feel my fingers on the strings again. I had to hold on to that sliver of myself. My name is Elizabeth Smart, and I play the harp. After I was rescued, I was excited to go back to playing the harp. I was looking forward to feeling those same feelings. I resumed my harp lessons, but when I eventually made it back to school that following fall, I quickly fell into the drama that is high school, and although harp was still a major part of my life, I became distracted by homework, friends, boys, and driving. I had always planned to study music in college. My dream was to go to Juilliard, but as the time to start applying to colleges drew near, I realized that Juilliard was not realistic for me, and that unless I really got serious about my practicing, I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere for music.
So I got serious about my practicing. I decided I wanted to go to Brigham Young University; it had an excellent music program and had spent years building up its harp program. The day of my audition, a cold snowy day in January, I was required to perform two pieces and one étude, after which I would have to take an aural test. My mom sat outside the room as I performed inside. I actually can’t remember at all how I played. I knew both of the judges personally, but I can’t remember if I walked out of that room feeling confident or worried. I took the aural test, which to this day I have no idea how I passed. The test consisted of listening to different notes and rhythms being played and choosing from several options to correctly identify them.
Mom had left after the performance part of the audition, and my boyfriend at the time was going to drive me the fifty miles back to
my home. As soon as the test was complete, I looked down at my phone and saw I had missed several phone calls from my family. I quickly called them back and asked, “What’s going on?”
Grandpa Smart was dying. They told me that if I ever wanted to see him again, I needed to get there fast. He had checked out of the hospital that morning, knowing he was going to check out of life. I had always been very close to Grandpa Smart. He was the one who taught me to love horses, riding, and late-night snowmobile adventures. I needed to be there to say good-bye before he died. I rushed to get my boyfriend and told him what was going on. He was a complete gentleman and started the car immediately. We raced off down the road, but by this time, the snowy day had progressed into a full-blown whiteout. Cars were backed up for miles on the freeway, moving at a snail’s pace. I worried I wasn’t going to make it. All the stress of the audition melted out of my mind—which is probably why I still can’t remember how I felt after the performance part.
I did finally make it to my grandparents’ home, about two blocks away from mine. As I ran in through the door, Grandpa Smart took another breath and then another, though each one seemed like a lot of work. I was able to tell him that I loved him so much. I said good-bye. My harp had appeared. Someone had brought it in so I could play one of the pieces that I had auditioned with: “Contemplation” by Henriette Renié. It is a beautiful, peaceful work, and as I played, my grandfather passed away. I hope he heard it before he went on to hear the true heavenly harps play. I always felt he waited for me to make it there, waited for me to say good-bye.
It wasn’t until a few days later that I wondered how I had fared at the audition. Would I be accepted? Would I be rejected? What would I do if I was rejected? Audition again next year? Try something new? I received my acceptance letter a few weeks later, and I was so excited that I was going to study harp performance, something I was good at. Professor Nicole Brady had recently been appointed director of the harp program. My freshman year was her first year teaching at a university.
Under Professor Brady’s tutelage I learned and progressed rapidly, better and faster than I ever had before. She inspired me, and I felt like I could accomplish anything. I always felt she believed in me, which made me believe that I had the ability to learn and play anything as long as I practiced hard enough. When I think of people who have inspired me to reach farther and achieve more, I think of her. I knew her before I studied under her, and I still consider her a mentor and dear friend to this day. So when I decided to write this book, she was on my list of people to interview from the beginning. I was thinking, even before Mike Schlappi helped me articulate it, that an essential part of healing, of hope, is having a goal that pulls us in a positive direction—like a lighthouse that gives us something to steer toward through storm and fog.
I drive to Nicole’s home, and as I pull up, I feel a little rush of excitement looking at her front door. Nicole has achieved the highest degree of education a person can get, studied under one of the greatest harp teachers in the world in Moscow and got a doctorate from Juilliard.
When I ask her what it was that drove her to achieve at that level, she says, “I loved school. When I was little, my dad always asked us, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ We always had to have something to say. We could change it the next day, but we always had to have something to say. That was a direction giver for my life, always having a plan. I was also one of those kids that loved quotes like, ‘Aim for the clouds because at least you’ll hit the treetops.’ I felt like if I could take my education as far as I could, I would be able to help others through teaching. That mattered so much to me, helping others, and teaching seemed the way to do that.”
“How would you say music affects you?”
“I guess I would say there have been times in my life when it has really saved me,” says Nicole. “I find it a really helpful thing now, when I feel my life is so chaotic with my four boys, that I can go and there’s this place of peace. Even if I’m stressed-out about a performance I have to play or something, I always find peace there.”
“When I was a student, I always felt like you understood what was going on in my life so well. I always felt like you adjusted your teaching style to meet what I needed at the time. Do you do that with every student?”
“Music instruction is one-on-one, which allows for lots of connection between people. It is also very personal. Everyone enters at their own level, and it’s very subjective. Because of that, you have to adapt to each student. The teacher that can’t do that isn’t a very good teacher, because it’s a very important part of being a teacher.”
“Being a teacher—being my teacher—you were always able to encourage me and inspire me to want to conquer whatever I was struggling with whenever I came in feeling like I had hit a wall or things just weren’t connecting. How did you do that?”
“I want my students to learn music they love. They’re motivated if they love it. Sometimes when a student comes to me with a piece in mind, I might recommend another before that piece to help prepare them in their technique or playing so they are able to confidently learn and play their desired piece. More than anything, I want them to love what they are doing.”
Thinking back on my time under Nicole as a student at BYU almost makes me wish I were still there. There was nothing like going to a lesson knowing I had practiced my brains out and was prepared, setting new goals for the next week, feeling so excited to go out and tackle them. I learned so much, not just about music but about myself. I learned that I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew, and no matter how many times I do that to myself and have to readjust my goals, I will once again bite off more than I can chew. I almost laughingly ask Nicole, “How do you make realistic goals for yourself? Please, tell me the secret!”
“I keep a practice journal,” she says. “I have done this specifically with harp, but it would probably be good to do with the rest of my life. The first thing is to write what you’re going to do in your practice session. What you’re going to accomplish. And then at the bottom of the page, at the end of your practice session, write if you did accomplish what you had written. Then compare the two—what you wanted and what you did—so you can set better goals next time. Usually our goal making is off, too high or too low. So if I have a student who wants to compete in a competition or something, I tell them to set a drop-dead date before the competition, and if they’re not ready by that drop-dead date, then forget it. You are not going to that competition. It helps my students to be realistic.”
It’s comforting for me to hear someone I look up to say that our goal making is usually off. Every New Year’s Eve, I write a whole list of plans and new goals I’m going to achieve that year. I’m probably not alone in that. Every year, I feel lucky if I achieve even a quarter of what I had written down. I’m probably not alone in that either. Life does happen, and life does get in the way, but it’s important to continually set goals for ourselves and make the daily choice to pursue them to whatever extent we can.
Nicole Brady, whose words affected me even more than her harp instruction, helped me realize that what it comes down to is our desire to progress, our desire to move forward. Goals don’t have to be big. They don’t have to have anything to do with music, basketball, or anything else in particular. Sometimes the goal is getting through the day. I know what it’s like to want to stay in bed and hide under the covers. Sometimes the worthy goals are simple and achievable tasks like “Get out of bed today,” or “Do laundry,” or “Do something to make myself happy.” Each goal we achieve is a step, a choice to move forward. To take one more breath. And then take another.
I have always said, “It’s not what happens to us that defines who we are, it’s our choices that define who we are.”
Mike Schlappi exemplifies this philosophy. He continually chose to think beyond the wheelchair and focus on doing all that he wanted to do. But he also chose to be happy. For people like me, who are always aiming a little too hi
gh, the temptation is to judge ourselves or compare ourselves to others who’ve gotten to the place we hope to go. But if happiness is the most important goal, doesn’t self-judgment take us a step backwards?
If our goals guide us and give us something to strive for, can we find happiness in the pursuit and be okay with the idea that we may never actually reach the goal?
Do our goals give our lives purpose—or is purpose something larger?
11
Living with a Purpose
I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.
—CARL JUNG
If we wait for someone else to fix our problems, they probably will never be fixed. Whether we find ourselves with an actual number on the days of life we have left or we just realize that we all have a limited amount of time, we need to make sure we don’t squander our life here. You’ve heard that old saying “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” It’s all about why we’re living, not just how. It’s about loving this life that could so easily pass us by if we live passively.
Alec Unsicker, along with his family, started AJU Foundation, putting Alec’s initials and the family’s personal spin on “Make a Wish,” with a simple purpose: “To put smiles on the faces of people battling cancer.” A smile may not seem like such a grand purpose in the big picture, but as a teenager coping with cancer since childhood, Alec sees the big picture a bit differently.
In the very first texts I exchanged with Alec, he was happy, positive, and willing to help me. We set a time and date for me to drive the hour and a half from my house to his, to interview him for an hour or so. This may not seem like a lot to most people, but when you are told you have a limited amount of time to live, each hour is precious and makes a difference. I was grateful for the opportunity to spend time with Alec and his family.
Where There's Hope Page 20