A few years ago I decided to really go for it with music, to explore the limits of what I could create and become. When you start a journey like that publicly you muster all the bravery available. You have to learn to walk through fear, to respond to the voices in your head that hold you back, to accept risk, to hear criticism and to understand rejection for what it is--as though they are all just various ogres on the quest to reach the discovery of what you're actually looking for and why. The limits of your ability are theoretically understood at the outset, but remain like distant mountains on a clear day, hard to tell whether you're close or far away, only that they beckon. Beautiful on the horizon, perhaps shivery cold when you arrive. A song nobody has heard might be great, you think. A show never performed can remain epic on the horizon. A voice never recorded is equal parts fantasy. A band never assembled might win a Grammy. But what is the truth about what's actually possible? Do you even want to know? You set out walking to find out.
It's a frightening concept at first. Most of the time our limits may be better left unseen. To arrive at the extent of your potential in any regard is to witness the end of a life story, to let a dream die, and it could be said we are the sum of our dreams. To encourage someone else to accept their own limit is to ask a friend to let go of a part of themselves--who wants to do that? It's sad. So with almost religious fervor, we often find ourselves propping up and believing in fantasies that can't be proven wrong unless we are willing to accept wrongness as a possibility, which our faith or our fear do not willingly permit. “When I'm older, I will be President!" the boy says. He will not, and we all know it, but who wants to tell him? What's the harm of a dream? His dream is part of what we know about him. If he wants to find out the truth on that, he can do it himself. Just start walking kid and see how close you get, growing along the way. Or don't walk and you can just keep believing, which may have value to you.
With music, I decided to walk to try to find the truth. I think I didn't walk when I was younger partly because I was afraid to discover that I could not be President, metaphorically speaking, and to not try meant that I could continue to believe. At some point, in some strange way, I became accepting enough of shortcomings in other parts of my life to finally be willing to face the music dreams that I held most closely.
The songs, the albums, the band, the performances. Opera. My approach has become to walk until my feet won't go, at which point the road ends (or bends into an asymptote) and I pick up the bittersweet gift of knowing the limits of my potential. It's humbling. It's scary. It's public. I now know I won't ever write like Paul Simon. I won't ever sing like Ray Charles. I won't ever fill a house like Pavarotti. You and I knew all of that already, but only theoretically, and a life lived fully is not theoretical. Now I know because I have walked to the ground I can't cross. No, I am not the next big thing. I will more likely die with my music known only to some of my friends and family, then just my kids, then poof. That's life. It sounds sad, right?
But as it turns out, it's not. It's beautiful. This walk has been one of the best things I've ever done in my life. I feel fuller, richer, braver, grateful. I set out to find my limits and instead found more freedom, ironically. The thing about a hero journey is you set out for one reward to discover that the real reward wasn't the one you were chasing.
If you're holding onto a dream, maybe you should just go chase it. Live! Slay the ogres along the way. You'll find me on the quixotic path, too…we can walk together.