Advice

A few years ago while I was at church camp, I was sitting in a hammock, talking to a counselor there named Alex (with whom I would later become genuine friends). We were either talking about how I wanted to write a book but was afraid to try or how I wished so much that I could sing. The advice applies for both, so we'll just assume for the moment that it was about singing. I must have seemed pretty dejected about my supreme lack of vocal skills because at one point he just kind of looked at me and said something like "Well, yeah, it's gonna suck at first. Of course it is. But if you start now and work at it, it won't suck at the end. So just let it be bad for now." He told me that that had been the general approach that he'd taken to singing, too; I started thinking that if I sang at home all the time, even at the expense of my family's patience, maybe I'd get better. (I haven't gotten better, but I think I'm expecting too much.)

This really stuck with me because of how blunt it was. It wasn't a prim and proper saying, and it wasn't cheesy or something that you'd hear everyday. When you say that you wish you could sing, you don't really expect someone to say "Well, yeah, let it suck at first, because it will." You expect them to say that you're good at other things, or that it's really not that important to be a singer anyway, or that only a few people are actually really spectacular. Instead, it's "Deal with it for now. It gets better." But I love it. It's completely true. How can anyone get better at anything if they expect to jump straight from novice to brilliant? The honesty of this advice is what makes it easier to follow and, more importantly, is what makes it so real.