Easy enough
Sure, a layup is a straightforward shot, but there are going to be people in the way. (Library of Congress)
Shortly after my high school graduation, I attended one last session of Summer Youth Music School, or SYMS, at the University of New Hampshire.
My experiences during the three summers I attended this two-week music camp had a significant impact on me as a young musician. That’s where I learned music theory. That’s where I learned the heights of musicianship teenagers could attain, though I did not attain them myself at the time.
One of the events was a talent show, and I auditioned with Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend.” I was playing the piano and singing at the same time, a one-hundred-percent brand new skill for me. Unsurprisingly, given my halting and uncertain performance, I did not make the cut.
Looking back, it’s impressive that I taught myself, on my own, how to play and sing pop songs with only a chord chart to guide me. YouTube didn’t exist back then, honey! However, the impressive and admirable accomplishment was only in the learning — and we don’t measure music that way. We measure it by how it sounds.
For the talent show, I would have been much better off playing and singing a song I already knew how to play well (probably on the guitar).
I did understand this, on some level. My senior year of high school, my choir traveled to Williamsburg, Virginia, to participate in a competition. In order to boost our potential scores, our choir director, Mrs. B, chose pieces that were rated at the highest possible level of difficulty.
The truth was that neither our choir nor Mrs. B was up to the challenge. We sounded awful, all the way up to and including our performance at the competition itself.
I remember pleading with Mrs. B to do some easier pieces. She scoffed and suggested that I needed to think bigger.
We actually won the competition because of the points we gained from the pieces we chose, but the victory was sour. I’ve never forgotten the shame of that misplaced ambition, even though I did not have the self-awareness to realize that I was doing the same thing with my talent show audition at SYMS just a few months later.
Since then, I’ve certainly had moments in my life when the time was right to push myself and stretch my skills. But sometimes, the execution is what matters, and it’s more important to focus on that.
Successful, confident performance brings its own challenges. If we are pushing to the leading edge of our ability in practice, then we might not be ready to share that work with others yet. We can choose something that is easier for us. That’s never the choice the hero makes in the movie, but that might be best in real life.
When I was a music teacher, I chose my student’s recital pieces based on what they could already play well on the day we booked the recital. Then, we could spend the next six weeks polishing the piece and looking forward to a positive experience at the recital rather than racing the clock to put the finishing touches on their hardest piece yet. Much less stress, much more sustainable. My students could do a recital every couple of months with this approach (and many of them did).
I am more familiar with my capacity than I used to be, so I can (and do) say yes to things that scare me (like the talk that I delivered on stage at a conference last month). I have enough time to prepare, enough experience to draw upon, and enough support and coaching to have a realistic sense of how I’m coming off. I said yes before I was ready, knowing that I could be ready.
At eighteen, on the other hand, my “yes” was empty. My yes would have been the hubris of Mrs. B, and I would have struggled. I’m glad for all of the “nos” I received that saved me from myself.
We can, selectively and thoughtfully, accept requests that we’re not 100% prepared to follow through on, yet commit to following through. But that takes a lot of resources. The rest of the time, we can do things that are in our wheelhouse and get better at them. We can just do the thing we’re already pretty good at, whether it’s for fun, for the benefit of someone else, or both.
We don’t always have to seek the highest difficulty setting. We can opt for what’s easy and straightforward. That’s not a cop-out — it can be generous, sustainable, and enjoyable.
