Photo by Manas Pant/The Gazelle

Here at NYU Abu Dhabi, we all know the Charlie anecdote. Exactly a year ago, during Candidate Weekend, I sat sleep deprived, slumped over in my chair as JS earnestly recounted the story. Charlie, a mentor with passion and a vision that inspired the idea of a truly global institution. His quote was one guaranteed to be used by students in both graduation speeches and in sardonic comments made late at night: “Play another octave on the piano.”

For those who don’t know, the foundational sentiment behind playing another octave is this: Try and experience those things you have yet to witness, and be sure to let them teach you. Playing another octave is all about pushing oneself and being ambitious and persistent in the pursuit of the unknown. It is applicable to music, food, travel and friends. If you haven’t experienced something before, go toward it now with unabashed enthusiasm.

As someone who had never left the continent on which she was born before that weekend — who grew up in a suburban community as heterogeneous as a jar of mayonnaise — this thought exhilarated me. I sat a little straighter in my chair, intoxicated by my resolve to do and experience great things.

This quote is an integral part of NYUAD culture. It is a quote so fundamentally Instagrammable that it emboldened an entire cohort of undergraduates with the Lo-Fi tint of its inspiring sound. Countless candidates have been dazzled by Sexton’s rhetoric, like I was. This dogmatic perspective perpetuates certain notions of who we should be and the lives we should live. The sentiment of playing another octave, of always peering curiously out at the world and embracing its uncertainty is at its core, a positive message. Leaving our comfort zones is what brought most of us here and will likely motivate what many of us choose to do in the future. Our community seems to operate on the assumption that everything that is adventurous or new is also implicitly good and healthy. This a priori belief in the inherently laudable nature of constantly doing something works to validate the stigma surrounding relaxing or taking a break. This one-dimensional supposition of success exists in our Facebook groups, on our to-do lists and in the imminence of the summer funding deadline. Somehow — who knows why — if we aren’t interning, traveling, excelling and experiencing, we are doing something wrong.

However, the rosy picture of life as a consistently transcendent experience is a difficult image to accept in the trenches of everyday monotony. Life can be tough, and searching for all of the liberal arts octaves on a piano — that a sleep-deprived student might see as a viable place to nap — is draining. The value of the comfort zone as a place of rest is overlooked far too often.

This unspoken stipulation about playing another octave is often forgotten: it is vital to return to the notes you’re familiar with as support. Taking a week to simply breathe can be just as beneficial as jetsetting to a foreign country. Resting in the restorative familiarity of home, instead of taking on an internship for the summer isn’t a shameful thing. At the end of the day, all that’s left to be, is happy. That joy can be found both in the adrenaline of octaves unknown, and in the familiar timbre of home. Some days I don’t want to play at all, and that’s perfectly alright. I’ll lift my fingers briefly from the keys, make myself a cup of tea and see how I feel tomorrow.