Trying and failing
Hell is being trapped into an eternity of feeling annoyed and impatient. (Image by Laurent Verdier)
I realized that I’ve been having a quiet, months-long temper tantrum.
The last time I tried to knit something, I couldn’t get my gauge to come out right. That means that my stitches were too big for the pattern I was knitting, so anything I tried to knit would end up being too big.
I went down a needle size to see if my stitches would be small enough; same problem. I went down another needle size, and another—same problem. A problem I hadn’t really encountered in two years of obsessive knitting. So I put the project away, and nine months later I still haven’t knit anything.
Even though I love knitting and have determinedly pushed through big challenges in my short knitting career, this one really threw me. I’m sure I could have come up with a solution if I had tried, but I just didn’t. I ran away instead. I was frustrated and discouraged, and I gave up.
The funny thing is that I didn’t even spot the temper tantrum until I went back. Inspired to knit for a friend’s new baby, I was like, “Hmm, that’s so strange! I haven’t knit in so long.” And then I remembered why. Those feelings have faded, so I’ll just step around my gauge problem and try something else. But I didn’t really resolve it.
I suspect that a lot of my students have had these kinds of temper tantrums over the years. Some of them quit over it. I remember one parent who called me, deeply concerned that her eight-year-old was crying in frustration at the piano bench. I delicately explained that she was crying because the music mattered to her. I suspect it’s a universal experience for musicians—maybe artists in general. People in general. I wasn’t applying performance pressure to this third grader. It was internal. She wanted to be better than she could be in that moment.
Even though frustration doesn’t feel good, I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with the eight-year-old’s experience or mine. I’m not convinced there’s anything wrong with quitting, either, if it comes to that. Who cares that I haven’t knit anything since last winter? I’ve done other things. I have plenty of hobbies. It’s not a big deal.
Sometimes, we have blocks that come up that prevent us from pursuing an activity we once loved. A close friend, reeling from a devastating diagnosis, has been unable to engage in painting or piano since she received the bad news. These pastimes remind her of her oblivious happiness in the time before. There was a song I loved in the late summer of 2001—a wistful, joyful song about the future—and then 9/11 happened, and it hurt too much to listen to it. Whether the trauma is massive like my friend’s or just a tiny pang like mine, it can sidetrack a person for years.
When it’s this hard to stick with the things we love, it’s no wonder that it’s practically impossible to work through frustration, discouragement, and other negative feelings to pursue stuff that we don’t want to do. But boredom doesn’t lead to temper tantrums. I believe that a lot of my students who have struggled with specific school subjects, particularly math, care just as much about what they’re doing as my eight-year-old piano student. They really want to succeed, and that’s what makes the failure so painful.
The best approach I have found is to provide space and not push. The tricky part is, at the same time, to provide a container somehow so that it doesn’t take nine months or twenty years for my student (or me) to come back to the challenge. I’m generally good at the not pushing part; I’m still figuring out how to balance that with the periodic invitations to re-engage.
Maybe the best thing for us is to understand that dealing with the painful gap between where we are and where we wish could be is a fundamental human struggle. When we can accept or even embrace ourselves, our flaws, our mistakes, and our disappointments, recovering isn’t so fraught. We expect the bumps and we adapt. We have less resistance and more resilience.
Today, my friend who hasn’t been able to make art sent me a little question about a piano piece. I was thrilled…that means she’s playing again! But I didn’t make a big fuss about it. I don’t want to make her scamper away like a startled deer I’ve come upon in the forest. It’s good to ease back into it gently, little by little, almost without noticing.
It was good to get into the yarn shop this week and squish some skeins. I’m already second-guessing the color choices of my new project and feeling a little overwhelmed, but I will take it slow and avoid any sudden movements. It’s enough just to be trying again.
Have you ever quit something you loved, or wanted to quit? How did you find your way back to enjoyment again? How do you manage frustration and discouragement? I’d like to hear your experience.