Day Three Hundred and Twenty One - Learning

Here's the terrible things about human beings: we're great at learning. Unless we think we already know something. Then, then we're awful.

Today, I picked up my guitar again. Anthem was fairly excited. I'm not entirely sure what his expression was, but I think it's safe to say he was happy. My fingers are throbbing and my muscle memory is horrid. But there was hope. It felt good, even through the pain, and something in my heart resonated. I need music. I don't understand it, not at all, but there are ways that I can communicate, and more importantly listen, through music that I simply can't through words. That's beside the point. The point is that Anthem is really, really good at playing guitar. He's a music guy. And he's amazing at it. I am not. I am getting my callouses back and trying to remember how to play a G.

And yet the minute he gave me advice, I immediately snapped at him. I knew I looked stupid because I can't play anything well. And I was defensive. He's Anthem for goodness sake. He sits down and makes magic when he picks up a guitar. There are 3 year old Korean children that can play guitar better than me.

And yet - yet I was defensive at his advice rather than realizing that of course I should take his advice because of course he knows what he's doing. He pointed out that I was being defensive and ridiculous, which made me more defensive and ridiculous, but given a few minutes (and a little bit of pouting), I started trying it his way.

And here's the shocker: his advice was dead on. It literally made my practice time at least twice as productive. And that's when I realized - it's not that I thought he had bad advice. I simply thought that because we have two very, very different brains that I already knew how to do it the best way for me. It wasn't that I thought Anthem's advice wasn't good - it's that I thought I already knew something different. I didn't have to learn how to practice guitar. I had to relearn. And that's when my pride came in.

And hopefully, now that I know that, I can relearn - right now - that I don't know how to do everything and just listen to the experts.