Scales

This has been an incredibly topsy turvy month.  Lots of aspirations, lots of efforts made, lots of feeling discouraged over what feels like a low level of tangible results.

It's big-time important that I learn a lesson I did NOT learn back in 6th grade.  After I'd begged them to let me take the clarinet, my parents rented me an instrument & signed me up for classes.  Problem was, I didn't want to LEARN how to play the clarinet; I wanted to do it, right off the bat.

Discouraged with how awful I sounded, I begged my parents even more passionately to let me ditch the classes.

And they let me.

Years later, in my twenties, it hit me that my parents gave me what I wanted, but lost an opportunity to provide me with what I needed.  Since the choice to take the clarinet was mine, it seems to me that the best response from my parents - no matter how hard I pleaded, cried, made life uncomfy - was to say that I could quit ~ ~ after I'd mastered the scales.

That's a lesson I have to remember today, decades & decades after The Incident of the Clarinet - it was easy to realize that I am, by nature, a Task Type, but the reality is that all of my patterns have focused on un-, even anti-Task dynamics.  Like with the clarinet, I want to BE something that's going to take step by step by step work, and that's sometimes going to feel as awful as the sound of a clarinet being played by someone without a clue how to partner breath with reed work.

Look at the successes, not the work left to be done.  Applaud mastering even the smallest "next best step forward" dynamic.  Be persistent with what works & do more of it, while at the same time not doing what doesn't.

Learn the scales of  Task-oriented living.  Parent myself with a devotion to inspiring my inner child to do what I need long enough that it becomes what I want.  Master the scales of smart living & the ability to live a more harmonious life will be a performance away.