It's okay if you don't know yet

The flowers bloom in season, but not on a schedule. (Image by Uschi Dugulin)

Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos is a collection of over 150 progressive piano pieces, meaning that each one introduces a new element, making it slightly more challenging than the one before it. I guess Bartók wrote the first couple of volumes for his son, who was learning to play the piano.

When I first learned of Mikrokosmos, I was intrigued. I love progressive educational material in any subject, even though the pacing usually needs to be adjusted by supplementing with additional resources. It’s satisfying to think that someone has carefully curated a learning program and created something that flows easily from concept to concept, skill to skill. Plus, I enjoyed the Bartók pieces I played myself as a child — bold, memorable, and full of surprises. This could be great!

However, when I finally picked up a copy of Mikrokosmos for myself, I was disappointed. The early pieces were repetitive, difficult without being rewarding, and would probably be weird-sounding to my students. This classic work of twentieth century music remained on the shelf.

It would be wonderful if we could learn from the work of others to come up with a perfect system for ourselves or our students. We can follow in someone else’s footsteps exactly; better yet, we can reverse-engineer their success and achieve a similar result even faster or with less effort.

However, learning isn’t always like that. If we’re hoping to make our own unique contribution to the world, we might not be able to get to where we want to go if we copy another person’s exact path.

Furthermore, we might not know yet where we want to go — we might prefer to explore and experiment before stepping on a conveyor belt toward a specific destination.

There are many experts who will teach you a step-by-step process you can undertake to make something happen. It is wise to learn from someone else — it really does save a lot of time and energy. However, in practice, your journey may not be a linear one. What if it takes you three years to complete step one? That could be a bit of a disappointment if you were expecting it to take a half hour, but it doesn’t have to be. Those three years might be very well spent.

I’ll give you an example from my own world: Last year, I started working as a business coach. I know that it would be helpful for me to find a specific niche. I should define what kind of business coach I am. What problems am I helping people to solve?

I should be incredibly clear on what I’m doing, who I’m doing it for, why they should want it, and what makes me different from the others.

I don’t feel like I have this figured out at all. But that’s not necessarily a problem.

If it were an emergency, I’d be more intentional in order to grow a company fast. But I don’t do my best thinking in emergencies. I don’t want to put in a ton of effort to launch only to wind up miles from where I wanted to land.

So I go slowly. With each client, I get closer to understanding the problems I seek to solve. I gain a little more insight into what kind of work I’m best at. I improve at articulating and sharing my ideas. I enjoy the process of learning and growing.

Day by day, I figure stuff out. With a sense of ease, I appreciate the gradual unfolding of my work.

This is how I want my clients and students to experience their work, too. It doesn’t have to be stressful. You don’t have to be in a hurry. And you don’t have to have it all figured out at the beginning.

Theoretically, a student could learn to play the piano by playing through all the pieces of Mikrokosmos. However, a brief look at the very first piece showed me that the average young beginner would have to do quite a bit of preparation to be ready for it. Nothing wrong with that — unless she believed that she should be able to get it on the first try.

Plus, we humans aren’t obedient automatons who will carry out step after step without complaint. We like variety, novelty, and familiarity all at the same time. Getting the dosage just right may require that we deviate from a program as presented. Even if it’s guaranteed to work, many of us just can’t help ourselves. We pick and choose what aspects of a given methodology to follow.

In deviating from the turn-by-turn directions to follow the map or your own promptings, you haven’t necessarily ruined anything. Answers to big questions can take time, and solutions to big problems can require iteration. The advice of an expert might just amount to guidance and encouragement, not answers and instructions. To move forward, you have to try stuff on your own. And it’s okay if you don’t know yet exactly what the finished product will look like or how everything will turn out. Nobody does — and that’s the fun of it.