On a cold January morning just before rush hour, Joshua Bell stepped out of a cab and walked into the subway station at L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, DC. He found the spot he’d picked out before, a place where the acoustics would carry, and he sat down. Wearing jeans, a T-shirt, jacket, and a baseball cap, Bell watched the crowd for a moment. Busy commuters walked by, some eyeing him cautiously, most not making any eye contact at all. He could hardly contain his excitement for what would happen next. Bell took off his jacket, opened an old violin case he’d brought with him, and took out his instrument. He paused and took a breath, and at 7:51 AM, Bell started playing.
He started with a bang, playing Bach’s Chaconne, a fourteen-minute piece generally considered to be the single greatest solo violin work ever composed. And he watched.
One minute in, nothing happened. Two minutes in, nothing happened.
Nobody paid him any attention. None at all. Not for a lowly street musician.
Three minutes in, there was hope. A man turned his head and looked in Bell’s general direction, becoming somewhat aware that someone was playing some kind of music.
But the man kept walking.
A minute after that, a woman walked by and dropped a dollar bill down by his feet.
Two more minutes passed by and a man stopped and stood against the wall, listening.
Bell continued, masterfully playing pieces such as Ave Maria by Schubert, and others.
He played brilliantly, to the best of his ability, for a total of forty-three minutes. Throughout his entire performance, only seven people stopped and paid attention. None any longer than a minute. They watched, they turned; then they walked away.
Bell glanced down at the donations and added them up.
Twenty-seven people donated a total of $32, dropping a buck or so as they passed by.
Twenty dollars of the $32 was from one person who seemed to recognize the violinist.
But the most shocking stat he learned later was that one thousand and seventy people walked by oblivious to the music… and oblivious to him.
The few who stopped were interviewed later and said they thought Bell was good.
They just didn’t know how good.
When he played his final piece, Bell packed up his $3.5 million dollar Stradivarious, handcrafted close to three hundred years earlier, and stepped out into the cold and left.
The next night, Joshua Bell played the same music with the same instrument in one of the world’s most recognizable venues, and charged over $100 per audience member.
To be fair, nobody that morning was expecting an impromptu concert during their commute. I imagine the many people walking by, some as close as three feet away from him, had other things on their mind as they passed him by… maybe they were late for work, or had to stick to a schedule, or were preoccupied with busy lives.
But the fact that so few people saw Bell there and recognized his talents is also telling.
In life, you will be taken for granted.
Your talents, your contributions, what you have to offer will often be ignored.
You will feel like I assume Joshua Bell did that cold January morning, doing your absolute best, using the best tools you have at your disposal, giving your all, only to feel like nobody sees you, like you’re invisible, like what you’re doing doesn’t matter…
But it does.
You just have the wrong audience.
It’s easy to imagine how confused, frustrated, and heartbroken Joshua Bell must have felt as he packed up his Stradivarious and walked out. But I have to believe that when Joshua Bell stepped out into the cold and got in a cab, he left with a smile on his face.
Because when you know your own worth, it doesn’t matter what others think.
And when your talents aren’t recognized, it just means you have the wrong audience.
