When I started playing guitar in November, I feel like I unlocked a new source of joy. 

At age 30, It’s my first instrument. And even though I’ve been singing along, dancing, and incessantly sharing my favorite music for as long as I can remember, nothing can really compare to that first strum in a music store in Jaffa, feeling the sound resonate in my bones. Being the reason that beautiful sorcery happened and being in it all at once.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m not particularly coordinated. I’ve discovered that holding down fretboard strings with one hand *while* strumming with the other hand *while* singing is an evil form of multitasking. Then my hands are fairly small and it turns out my left pinkie has never worked a day in its life, which makes some attempts at chord shapes feel like a sinister game of Twister.

I’ve often been tempted to scream, exasperated, into the abyss. To rail against bad guitar playing everywhere, to bend my guitar skills to my will. To be good enough, right now.

It sounds, a bit, like “AGHHH.”

And yet. The chord I resent now is not the chord I resented two weeks ago. The brain is elastic in ways I never fully appreciated. So gradually, as I work through something like a new chord progression or song intro, I’m realizing (light as a thought bubble floating above my head):

Frustration doesn’t work.

Frustration shoves me forward, but only while throwing jacks in my path.

When “good enough” is my goal, it slows me down.

All the while, I’ve noticed what moves me forward instead: taking a deep breath, and laughing. Choosing to play songs that make me awe at the creativity and artistry of humans. I practice again, and again, and again. And magically, that song intro starts to flow. That song intro helps me zoom in in an overwhelming world.

Then I move on to the verse and start from 0 again. This time, knowing what it looks like to achieve that magic fluency, and what it takes to get there.

During my first lesson, my teacher watched my hands and said calmly, “Your brain moves really fast, but you don’t trust yourself.”

Of course he was right. He’s a very good teacher, by the way, if anyone needs one in Tel Aviv. And even though I knew I struggled with that brain/trust battle before, guitar has given me a whole new instrument to navigate it.

It’s not that I trust myself to play perfectly now. But I’ve gotten better at reminding myself to be playful when I’m tempted toward the aforementioned abyss, to take a breath and soften any frustration that only holds me back;

honing a sense of awe and joy that helps me let go of control;

and trusting myself to practice over and over again until I’ve gotten it right, laughing with myself until I’m proud of the chorus, until I’m proud of the bridge, until I’m gearing up to play the whole song together. 

Listen, to be honest, I’m still quite bad at guitar. I haven’t exactly reached Madison Square Garden (yet). But I do often call my friends to serenade them, and their completely unbiased opinion is that the joy is infectious.

I’m learning this is a life well played.