Lesson Learned - Failure

 

When I was younger, I was not given the option to fail. No grades below a B, no low ACT/SAT scores. I was supposed to be a perfect child who was brilliant and did everything she was told. Now that I'm much older, I am finally learning to embrace failure and that's a good thing. Back then, everything I did had to be perfect. Listen to your elders, I was told, and that way you won't make the mistakes we made in our lives. However, with that constant reminder being driven into me, there was also a part of me that wanted to find out WHY I was told not to do certain things. Looking back, I realize that I needed to find out the hard way. And so, I did. I failed many, many, many times, and it turned my anxiety into a force that wanted/needed to control everything. In that flawed way, I could pretend to be perfect to the world. What bullshit. 

My current violin teacher is one of the forces who changed my life. My previous violin teachers were fantastic in their own way, yet I used to beat myself up because I wanted to sound perfect from day one. I couldn't fail because to fail on the violin meant that I sucked and my life sucked and I couldn't do anything right. If I couldn't sound like Joshua Bell, then why bother? Then came Nadya, who advised me to EMBRACE YOUR FAILURES. By the time I met her, I was on my new path of reclaiming myself and removing all of the toxic crap from my life, yet failure was still a large pimple on my face. Nadya told me that in order to get better on the violin, one must suck. A lot. One must sound terrible in order to sound better. Practicing every day or as much as possible slowly changed from "dear god why" to "wow, I can do this!"

We fail because we need to learn. We fail because we ain't perfect. We fail because we are human. We can't make the best choice every time and when we make a mistake, we can't beat ourselves up over it. We CAN, however, pause and think about what we did. How did we fail? Why did we fail? What will this failure teach us, if anything? And most importantly - when will we get back up and try again? Recently, I got so frustrated at myself for sounding so horrible on the violin that I almost threw the instrument on the floor. Instead, I shut down and scrolled through social media while berating myself. Two hours later, I realized that I was being a schmuck and remembered that I was sounding terrible because I HAD JUST LEARNED THE NEW PIECE OF MUSIC. I couldn't sound wonderful with a piece of music I had learned to play only once. I wiped the frustration tears off my face, placed my violin in my case, and told myself to practice tomorrow. I just finished my practice for the day and I can tell that yes, I am getting better. Thanks, failure!

Lesson Learned.