You Must Be A Fool To Become a Master

Any time you start something new, you will not know where to begin.

The task at hand may seem overwhelming, but there is only one way to learn — take action and learn step by step.

I’ve noticed that as I get older, I become more and more impatient with the learning process. I have high expectations for myself and think of myself as a moderately smart guy, so when I approach a new creative endeavor, I have high ambitions and tackle the task with high energy.

I used to play a variety of instruments (drum and guitar) when I went to church, but ever since I stopped going I didn’t have a reason to pick it up again.

And so there my guitar sat in the corner of my room, gathering dust, wishing someone would pick it up, tune it, and strum a bright G chord.

Today was a different story. I came home and decided that I would pick up my guitar. I realized I didn’t have many hobbies besides reading, writing, and watching useless videos on Youtube for hours, so I thought practicing the guitar would be a nice way to fill my time. I believe having various skills makes you an interesting person.

So I pulled out the guitar from its case, went onto Google, and found an online tuner. At first, I found it strange that the strings were higher in pitch. Usually, when I left a guitar untuned for a while, it would have a deeper pitch.

While I was writing this, I realized I didn’t even know what to call that sound. Is the correct word tone? Is it pitch? What’s the word for it? I had to Google so much in order to write this one paragraph, so hopefully, I got it right. (Otherwise, please do me a favor and correct me in the comments)

Anyways, I finally got the guitar to sound right, and then I searched for a guitar tutorial for a song that I had been obsessed with these days. (Circles by Post Malone, anyone?)

I followed a couple of tutorials, and immediately I could sense that the guitar tutorial for the song was too basic for me. To be fair, the song itself does not utilize any fancy guitar melody so there really isn’t much to learn there. So I followed the tutorial for a while, and then I saw another tutorial for Lauv’s Paris in the Rain. I’ve always wanted to learn that song, so I started the video and followed along.

What came next was an extremely humbling experience. I realized that there was a huge gap between me and the man who was playing the guitar.

I realized that observing was not the same thing as doing. When you’re observing, you get to watch and even imagine yourself being able to play as well as the person in the video. This also happens when you’re watching any kind of tutorial. Frankly, if you’re trying to dance for the first time, you’re going to look more like a newborn deer than Michael Jackson.

I realized that my fingers were stubby while the instructor’s fingers were slender and “ideal” for playing the guitar. I realized how his fingers were moving fluidly across the guitar, almost dancing and jumping between different chords, while my toe resembling fingers tripped over each other trying to find the correct fret for the next chord.

I realized that only after 30 minutes my unaccustomed and spoiled fingers were raw and every minute of practice was painful. I had to take a break every so often because the metallic strings were digging into my medium rare finger skin.

I realized I would not be able to master this in a day, or even a week. I would have to put in a lot of time to remember each chord and the finger placements, the rhythm, the ad-libs, and then after getting down every little detail and playing the chords smoothly, spend even more time to perfect the song and play it entirely without stopping.

I realized how impossible that task seemed for me in the present moment. Thinking about it in this way is truly overwhelming and it makes the learning process not fun at all.

I could hear the whisper in my head telling me to put the guitar back in the case and go back to WATCHING people play guitar on Youtube. That would save me a lot of effort and time, and I wouldn’t have to go through this painful period of practice and frustration.

It was quite an embarrassing experience for me. But it was also an eye-opening one. I realized how arrogant I had been — I remembered all the instances where I had critically judged performances or creative endeavors (video, painting, movie, book, etc.) without thinking about how hard it was for the individual to create something from nothing.

The creator had to sit down, practice, and create for a long period of time in order to produce their creation, and I simply was the ungrateful benefactor who never really appreciated the experiences the creator had to go through during the learning and creative process.

Playing the guitar also made me appreciate musicians more. I could barely think about anything else while practicing the chords, but there are performers out there who can play instruments, dance, and sing beautifully all at the same time. If I even dared to hum while practicing, my motor functions would freeze and my fingers would start doing the can can dance rather than cooperate with me.

Go Be a Fool — Fall, Make Mistakes, Learn

Another thought that came to me throughout this learning process was that you must be willing to be a fool in order to become wise. If you believe that you are already wise, you are harboring an arrogance that inhibits your own growth.

Why? If you believe you are already wise, you will most likely be prideful. You will most likely put your intelligence on a pedestal and allow yourself to look down on others. You will slowly learn to disregard what other people have to say, which does not allow you to listen to people when they tell you about your blind spots.

You will not be willing to become a fool and learn something with humility because it will mean you run the risk of embarrassing yourself. You will not want to practice when people are watching because you don’t want them to see you at your “weakest” point. You want them to believe that you are good at everything you tackle, because you are intelligent.

You want to maintain this persona because you like being seen as a smart individual. If people see you make a fool of yourself or find out that you don’t know something, you are afraid that they will start undermining you or won’t think of you as highly as they had before.

When you’re prideful, the worst thing you could have happen to you is for people to find out your flaws and laugh at you for it. Prideful people hate being laughed at, because they feel that they are being disrespected and underestimated.

Pride has two aspects to it — confidence and arrogance. Confidence is the positive element of pride, while arrogance is the negative element. Confidence is being content with who you are in all your eccentricities and maintaining a healthy level of self-love and humility. Arrogance is being insecure with how much you value yourself — you look down on others and find joy in bringing other people down. You relinquish all humility, since in your world you are basically the greatest human being.

So what is the most logical step you take in order to avoid embarrassing yourself? You don’t take action and you refuse to learn anything that makes you feel like a fool. You learn to criticize and discredit other people’s views of the world and you only surround yourself with ideas that confirm your beliefs.

You learn to deconstruct everything around you, because you are unable to let go of your pride and never have tried to create something that you’ve never created before. Rather than bring others up and be fine with other people succeeding and flourishing, you bring them down so that you could always stay on top.

This strategy only hurts yourself. Not only does it prevent other people from enjoying their time with you, but when you do succeed in anything in life, you will look around and find that no one will be beside you, celebrating and laughing with you. Why? Because you would never extend that level of courtesy to them. So why should they?

I’ve slightly digressed from the main point, but the main argument is this — approach learning with a beginner’s mindset. Find things that you want to learn and make a real effort to learn it step by step. Don’t be arrogant and think you can avoid certain steps because you’re good enough. Very wise people have been kind enough to share their insights with you — you just have to watch closely and follow each step.

But the biggest thing you must do is take the leap and start DOING. In fact, you will probably learn 10x faster if you watch one tutorial or read one book and apply the things you’ve learned in that one resource. There’s no point in trying to find all the best resources and scour through them, hoping to find the one piece of advice that holds the ultimate truth.

You must go through the learning process yourself. It is truly the only way. In order for you to change, there must be action. You will learn many things about the activity you are pursuing to master and you will also learn many things about yourself.

“The fool is the precursor to the savior.”

― Carl Jung