The Price of Progress

I’m teaching myself how to play the guitar. Don’t get me wrong, I have no illusions that I’ll front a grammy-winning rock band anytime in the future. I just want to be able to play some chords along with songs I like.

I have wanted to learn how to play the guitar since I was a teenager, and since I’ve now been out of the teenage years more than twice as long I was in them, it is time.

We found a used guitar at a garage sale and the tone was pretty nice, and it even came with picks, an old case and a strap. Plus, the nice gentleman whose garage sale we were visiting threw in an almost brand-new pair of purple Nike kicks for free, so I figure it was a successful trip!

Then we got the guitar home. What the heck am I supposed to do with this thing? Luckily we now live in the Internet age, where tutorials and self-guided learning materials are commonplace and really easy to find and navigate. I searched for and printed out a couple pages of chords and sat down to experiment.

After about 30 seconds, my fingertips felt like they were being ripped to shreds, and bright purplish-red lines had appeared and streaked across the soft flesh, marring the distinctive fingerprints embedded there. Not to mention that the sound of the chords as I clumsily fumbled through the fingering on the fretboard sounded more like fingernails on a chalkboard than a pleasant, melodious hum.

The immature part of me very quickly jumped in and said, “Well, that was a great try, but this is going to be too hard. It hurts. You should just go back to playing the piano. It’s what you know.”

I’ve played the piano since I was six years old, and at one point I was pretty good, earned a Music Education degree and even taught lessons for a living. Now I just play for my own enjoyment. Nonetheless, it comes easy to me because, guess what? I practiced for many, many years. I had to start from scratch first.

At that moment, sitting there with my new guitar, I had a choice. I could just give up, save my fingers the pain and suffering, and just go back to what I knew. Or I could keep going, and work toward a goal I had for more than 25 years.

I would like to tell you I immediately chose to keep striving toward my goal, but it’s not as simple as that.

I had to mentally think the process through and weigh the pros and cons. Partly because of my extensive musical experience over the years, I knew that to become proficient in the guitar it would take patience and lots of time. It would take humility that I’m not going to sound even remotely good for a while. And it would take developing callouses on my fingertips, which would take some real, honest to goodness pain and discomfort for a while. Am I willing to do that?

Fast forward a few weeks, and I am starting to get callouses on my fingertips. My fingers hurt, but not quite as much as they used to. My chords still don’t sound perfect, but I’m improving. And I love it. As a bonus, I’m developing new neural pathways in my brain by learning something new, which will help protect it someday from dementia and other brain atrophy.

And more importantly, I’m not giving up. I know I won’t be ready to play in front of anyone for a very long time, but I’m truly enjoying it.

Here’s the thing. The pain is temporary discomfort. It’s not hurting me, and it won’t scar me for life. If I persevere and determine that I won’t give up, the temporary discomfort will give way to something beautiful in time.

How do I know this? It’s because I’ve walked through a lot of different seasons in life where I thought I was going to drown in the moment, but I walked through fire and ended up on the other side with more grace, more empathy, and more self-confidence.

The emotional callouses I developed over time didn’t harm me. And they didn’t actually harden me. There are scars and callouses, but these make up my beautiful life story. Because of them, the highs are higher, the sweetness of life is even sweeter, and the lows remind me that they are only temporary and that I must stay humble. And now I know I’m capable of a whole lot more than I ever thought.

Guess what? So are you. I’m not an anomaly. You’re capable of great things.

There is a price to progress. You have to look past the temporary and view it as a building block and stepping stone to what can be. Just don’t give up.