Practice

I began playing the piano before I can remember. My earliest memories are from a time when I was already playing piano. I started lessons when I was 3, before I knew what choice was. I practiced every day until I was 15.  

I practiced in the mornings before school. And at 8 I started playing the saxophone as well. I practiced saxophone in the afternoons. I went to NEMC, an elite music school in Maine, in the summer time. I was good, becoming the lead saxophonist at 15, beating out kids as old as 18. Practice was a fact of life. Not a day went by where I could get out of it, one way or another I practiced. My mother made sure of it.

Having such a daily practice brought me many gifts. I got attention for being ’talented’ though I did not believe in ’talent’- it was just part of my specialness, something true about me and my place in the world. Each day was just the surface of that day, skipping from practice to class to experience to home. But I went through my day with a feeling of being special. It brought me maturity and courage beyond my years… to ask out a popular girl two years older than I (at 14). I had confidence in who I was and had strong friendships. There was something about me that people wanted to be close to. I had sharp skills, and could impress any adult whenever I wanted to. I had incredible teachers offering to guide me deeper in my music.

At such a young age, there wasn’t time for me to reflect on what the practice brought me. I was me, and it was a part. But now, years past the daily practice, I have come to know that my mother was right, that I would thank her for it later. 

Language is easy for me. Math is easy for me. Analytical thinking comes natural, and my University major was a critical theory approach to literature, philosophy and history with a specialization in a foreign language. In part, this was due to the deep practice of music I had as a child.

But all the while, I never felt like it was mine, the decision to play music happened before I even had a sense of self. I felt like I was missing something other kids had- a normal life. I felt different. And so I turned away from my practice without even knowing I was doing it. 

It happened slowly at first, felt in the games I played with practicing, lies I told my mother, watching cartoons until she pulled in the driveway. There was a sense of burden I felt to keep her pride and approval, by playing the dutiful son. And as long as I was home, I kept it up, partly out of habit, but also a sense of guilt if I missed part of a day, fear that I would disappoint my mother.  

At 14, I left to go to a boarding school on the east coast. I left all that was familiar to me- my friends, my home, my parents. I had won entrance into an elite boarding school, which seemed natural to my sense of being special.  And now I was on my way to greatness. But away from the stability of the balance at home, of the ubiquitous presence of my mother, I did not practice. I simply stopped. The resistance I had simply let the days pass without doing my ‘work’ and I just let it go. I wanted to discover who I was, to be free, to find my own ‘passion’. What happened instead is that I lost something that made me who I was- my music. I lost the deep communion with my soul that was there when I played, even among the frustrations and difficulties of childhood that were far more present in my mind, that I blamed on being forced to practice. 

And I became something else. At home I was popular, well known, well liked, and had a strong group of friends who gave me a sense of belonging. Now, with all of that suddenly gone, I simply pretended I could just be that same person in another place. That I could trade the status I had gained from my hometown, into instant acceptance at a new school.

All the while I did not practice. I focused on what is important to a 14 year old boy- fitting in and my place among my peers. And the sense of specialness that I always had began to leave me, and the promise I felt inside me, and with it my faith that I am worthy of deep gifts. And I suddenly had nothing, no friends, no specialness, no context except my own sense of who I had been, and my agile mind, prepared by years of practice.

Challenged by the reality of starting over, I dug deep, formed friendships, and made my way through High School, a time we can all agree is challenging by itself. But I no longer had music to cast a spell over my life, to get me the things I needed- friendship, support, recognition.

Now as a grown man in the middle of my life, I sometimes wonder what could have been if I had kept up my practice. I turned away because I wanted something more than what I thought I was headed for as a 14 year old musician- a life of humble means, a monastic life, separate from the world and alone with my practice. I wanted success, the freedom of wealth, and deeper, acceptance by those high school kids. And so I tumbled through life’s unexpected realities; heartbreak, changing careers… the most difficult times in my life have come from me pulling back, turning away again; in romance, and career. And the feeling that I am not capable of going beyond the deep practice I left as a child, in any discipline, remains and keeps me from sticking with anything too long.

Through this, and despite it, I have now reached financial success, and achieved those things I wanted as a boy. I have recently stepped back from my career because I had achieved what I set out to do. Now I realize that it was not sustainable. I was slowly suffering, without any kind of practice, creative outlet, living a part of myself, without any true deep gifts. And it is my agile mind that allowed me to reach success, another gift I received from the practice I struggled with for so long.

But success for me has come with a sense of unworthiness, that I am not really special, that I do not deserve to do something that is wholly myself. I had put myself in boxes and shut doors inside myself in order to perform and succeed in corporate culture. I had settled for living as a part of me, and given up seeking to fully be myself in the world. And here, at the top of my mountain of worldly success, it has cost me the dream I thought I was working for, and maybe everything.  

So I turn once more to practice. I visit the times I left, turned my back on the duty, the work of making something special out of life. And I realize that I have a choice again- that I have won the freedom to choose, to go back into a deep practice, to sit and do my scales and my arpeggios, perhaps not in music, but in language and writing. I can choose this fully, as an adult, and the doubts I have about sticking with it, are just remnants of my forfeited youth, given over to someone else’s choice of what would make me special.  

My practice now is to be my whole self, every day, and the work lies before me, fueled by what I have learned in deep practice as a child.  In this practice, I earn my gifts. I begin now by picking up what I have forgotten, and will carry it with me for the rest of my days.