Well, this weekend, in the spirit of taking a break from inlay, I made this guy out of a pair of socks. He’s homely, but he’s supposed to be. You’d be homely, too, if you were made out of socks. I rather like him. And I didn’t saw off any fingers trying to make him. Woohoo!
Saturday also saw the arrival of my newest book order. I am probably in need of a saw, maybe band, maybe scroll, maybe I have no idea. So I do what I always do: got a book on it, to learn about all the tools, so that should I decide I have money burning a hole in my pocket, I can make an intelligent purchase. Right now, it’s sitting on the bookcase, but it’s ready at a moment’s notice if need be.
Saturday night I also scribed my fuschia project, with the idea of perhaps tackling the routing on Sunday. That was not to be, as my body was in full rebellion, and I spent the day resting with a book. It waits on my bench.
Monday, I was rereading old e-mails, and I found one from my friend Shenry. He had asked me the following: "To what extent can we actually change ourselves? Do we have the capability to go from Kristie to Siddhartha? Do we have the capability to go from shenry to Reza Zadeh (2004 Olympic Weightlifting Gold Medalist)? Or are we limited by personality programming, physical ability, dna, and our environments?"
And this was my response:
"To what extent can we change ourselves? To the level of our desire and our definitions of success. One cannot go without the other. For example, with the guitar, I have many, many more things to learn, and I hope to learn them, and am working toward learning them. However, the reality is, I have already achieved all my dreams in re: to playing and performing when I started down this road. By all my definitions, I am a success at this activity and could quit now without NEEDING to evolve anymore. However, I’d like to evolve further because I enjoy it, and while I might like to evolve indefinitely, there is the reality that my hands and joints already give me trouble, and it could cause me problems down the road that would make further evolution on the playing front difficult, if not impossible. And if I am attached to only a single definition of "guitar success," I’m going to have a real heavy emotional price to pay if/when that day comes. And in that, I guess it really is a Zen thing. Are you committed to evolution, or a specific outcome, a very limited evolution? If you’re committed to evolution itself, you will never stop evolving and changing; there are no limits. Even if you never become Reza Zadeh, you might evolve into someone else’s Blenda down the road. However, if you’re committed to becoming Rezah Zadeh, and only in doing so will you stamp yourself "successful," then you are going to most likely be limited. However, even a cursory examination will indicate that you put the limitation on yourself before you even started, rather than it being imposed upon you from without. If you’re trying to become something specific and limited, there will be limitations; but if you are trying to BECOME, well, then, there’s no stopping you.
That is not to say visualizing a goal and working toward it isn’t valuable. Thought, word, deed, and all that. It’s the attachment to the goal, and the dismissal of all other possibilities that could come of it as failures, that’s going to cause us problems. I have big dreams for my inlay project. I would like to get out of this cubicle and do it professionally, work with my hands creating beauty instead of e-mails. I’ve named my company already. It’s a goal. I’m visualizing it. I’m talking about it, at least to myself. I’m working toward it. But I have a long way to go, as I’m just beginning, and I cannot say what will happen. My interests may change, my patience may not hold out long enough to learn the skills I need to make it as a pro, I may lose an arm in a freak accident, I may be making perfect progress on my way to that goal and die before I get there. And yet, here I am, working on it, knowing all of the above to be true, because what else do I have to do? I’m here. May as well do something interesting."
That was my mistake: attaching to one goal as the only definition of success, and anything that didn’t meet it was a failure. I knew the answer so clearly in February, but somehow forgot it between there and here. But it is the right answer. If I can just get out of my own way, hip-check my ego off to the side, and get back to enjoying puttering in my shop, I will be happier, and I have to believe the work will get better.
