Our Relationship With Discomfort

This came up again this week, that we have a terrible relationship with discomfort. We whitewash our experiences especially for those in our care to make sure everything is sanitary and neat and free from anything that might be uncomfortable. We even find it shameful in some cases to experience discomfort. When are we going to stop? Should we stop? Cello is such a physical instrument is this a dangerous idea?

I will be the first to admit, I have struggled with injury many times in my life. Something I have not talked enough about on the YouTube channel. So if someone says to me, push through the discomfort I automatically assume they mean push through the physical pain of playing through an injury. Don’t do that!! That is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about something which is much more experiential. We are not okay with the experience of not knowing something and getting it wrong over and over and over again and finally getting it right after so many repetitions. This is the uncomfortable thing that we need to get comfortable with, the not knowing.

Sometimes we feel shame for not knowing, I have written about that previously but most of the time I think it’s probably more subtle and we are avoiding it just out of pure habit and we may not even know we are doing it.

It’s okay to not know something. Thats why you are here. That is why you watch the videos. In fact that is why you play the cello in the first place, because it is a journey of discovery. Then we pick up the cello and don’t like that we don’t know something. I am the same way, I am saying all of this to myself as well as all of you out there, it is one of the great paradoxes of the human experience isn’t it. That we have a deep fascination with something even a deep love of something yet we paralyze ourselves in the mire of worry over what we don’t know about it.

Now that I say it all out loud it feels silly and I smile to myself because I think this is a great epiphany for us all to have together. We must remind ourselves continually that the discomfort or the not knowing is why we chose to do this in the first place. The challenge is what makes it fun and interesting and more than that the beauty of the sound on the other side makes it all worth it. We are struggling to get there because there is something amazing on the other side.

Set a goal, set a timer, grant some grace and be at peace with wherever you are and whatever you know at the moment. Tomorrow will be better so long as you keep at it.

Happy Practicing

Clay