For inspiration and contemplation, I turn to artists; listening for the ways they talk about and move in their craft helps me reimagine and sustain in the many challenges of interpersonal care. In a recent music lesson, my instructor shared a brief anecdote. The story goes like this: a guitarist seeks a more experienced teacher. The student shows up on the first day and the teacher asks, “Do you know the major chord?” “Sure,” responds the pupil and promptly plays it proficiently. “You don’t know the major chord” responds the teacher. The End.
Upon hearing this I chortled. My instructor continued: “you have to be able to hear and feel the relationship between the notes in the major chord when you play it, muscle memory isn’t it.” Whew. If muscle memory isn’t the goal, then what is? From this teaching in musicology, I can better hold and welcome that feeling, and indeed mistakes, are the breath of life. However, any talk of making mistakes in our world is surely unfavorable, so let us consider together, what is at stake when perfectionism is lauded above all else?