Climbing higher : investing time to do things right
Effort precedes flow
I watched my son hastily take off his coat, putting the sleeves inside out. I could already imagine his frustration, next time he’ll want to put it on. “Haha”, I thought, “I will grab this chance to tell him how small habits can keep us from getting frustrated later on, if we just take the time to form those habits”. Later that day however, I had to apply these wise words to myself.
Growing up, I followed violin lessons at the music school. The girl I shared the lesson with would practise hard and know her piece, but play off-key, while I would not practise, hesitate, but play in tune. My teacher was understandably frustrated, and soon realized that if I was going to practise at all, he would have to find pieces I WANTED to play. I had no motivation whatsoever to play boring studies to perfect my technique. I didn’t care if it was difficult, as long as I liked it.
I had heard a modern interpretation of Bach’s toccata on the violin by Vanessa Mae, and my teacher managed to find the music sheets. The flow of that piece easily makes me forget time. Though I haven’t managed to play it perfectly yet, I selfishly enjoy playing it to myself.
My (stubborn) way of learning to play a piece is just to play it over and over. I’ll rarely stop to figure out the hard parts and repeat those until I master them. As a result, there are few pieces I can play perfectly and I mostly keep the violin to myself. But today, the hard part I usually botch annoyed me, and I interrupted my playing to focus on repeating that part slowly at least 4 times. There we go. I play it smoothly now. Was it so hard to stop and practise? No, but it required interrupting my enjoyment of the piece to spend some time dissecting the movements — a practice right at the opposite of flow, and yet indispensable to reach it.
We only change when we want it hard enough, when we get a glimpse of “what could be” and become thouroughly dissatisfied with our current situation.
The view from the hill of mediocrity cannot compare to that of the majestic mountains. Reaching a state of flow requires effort, getting off that miserable hill, descending to the valley of adjustment, and then starting the rocky ascension, one step at a time. The music up there has a different ring, a seemingly effortless ring, and yet one which is built on effort.
