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Why I Write
It might be your reason, too
I was talking with a friend one night about what’s going on in our lives. We hadn’t caught up in a while, and he was telling me about his realization that good things are happening through the very things that are making him miserable.
He plays guitar — classical style, with a lot of intricate fingerwork — and he’d been experiencing some issues with the tendons in his hand, which was causing extreme pain when he attempted to play. Having forced time away from it was making him bitter about his unfortunate circumstance, but it gave him time to reflect on what he missed most about it.
He said he gradually realized that he’d made guitar his personal idol in many ways. He loved the thrill of working his way through a complicated piece, but he looked forward to the adulation that followed when he played for an audience. His bitterness was rooted in the loss of the ego stroking more than the loss of the music.
As a Christian, he said he’d completely lost focus on why he’d started to learn classical guitar in the first place: to glorify God with the musical gift he’d been given. Once he got back to his roots, so to speak, he was able to begin playing again with a modified fingering technique, much like famed jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, with little to no pain.
