Sometimes You Have To Sacrifice

I never realized it as a child, but my parents gave me so many opportunities to explore who I was and what I enjoyed. If I said I liked riding bikes, they made sure I had a bike to ride. If I said I wanted to learn how to play the trumpet like my dad, they bought be a trumpet. Sometimes I felt as though they were forcing these things on me, but it's not until now, some 20 years later, that I realize what their intentions really were.

Cut to present day, I finished work this evening, cracked open a beer and picked up the guitar. I needed a little R&R. I eventually went back to Don McClean's American Pie. It's such a great song, and not that hard to play, it just takes some practice. I used to be able to play and sing the whole song, but its been some time. I really haven't had time to play the guitar at all recently. My fingers started to get sore and my beer began to get a bit...empty. As much as I wanted to bring that song back into my repertoire I thought, "eh, my fingers kinda hurt. I'll just stop for the night." That's when it hit me.

That moment when I was about to give up on re-learning American Pie on the guitar was, I realized, the line between good and great. I have to give a lot of credit to my parents and the way they raised me. I was a smart kid, at least in school. Things came very easy for me. I just did the assignments I was supposed to and I passed with flying colors. College wasn't so easy, at least not into the third and fourth years. I didn't understand what it meant to sacrifice something in order to achieve what I really wanted.

OK, one last tangent to pull it all together. I know it's a common saying, but there is a scene in an episode of the television show Scrubs where Dr. Kelso comes barging into the room of a young, overweight patient who has chosen surgery over dieting and exercise to lose weight. He explains to her that nothing in life worth having comes easy. I don't know why, but that stuck with me.

I think back to the last few years, where I stayed home a lot of weekends because I didn't have any extra money to spend on fun. I needed to work. I took jobs that I knew were below me. I didn't date because, seriously, who wanted to date a broke guy who could barely pay rent. The feeling of sitting at home on a Friday night and imagining that everyone else is out enjoying the weekend after working hard all week while you sit alone on a couch watching TV is painful. I realized what it meant to sacrifice something to get what I really wanted.

I wanted to be out of that apartment, out of financial constraints and to be able to live my life on my terms. It wasn't going to happen by itself. I had to give up a social life and the comfort of working reliable/respectable jobs to make it work. But I did it. I own a home. I have a job where I make enough money to provide for myself and then a little on the site. I have my life back.

Which brings me to my original point. I was giving up on learning a song on the guitar because it got too hard. My fingers hurt. I understand now that if I ever want to be great at the guitar, I need to sacrifice something to get there. It's not going to come on its own while I bow out to a sore finger. If I ever want to play in front of a crowd, I'm going to have to forfeit something in the way of life I'm living now in order to work to achieve it. And then about my parents, who gave me every opportunity I could imagine. When I got upset and though they were pushing me into something because they wanted to live through me, they weren't. They were trying to teach me that nothing in life worth having comes easy. If you always do what's expected of you, you will be mediocre. If you strive beyond expectations, you will be great.

I had a professor in my freshmen year of college who told me that I was the kind of person who would be good at everything, but great at nothing. Normally that would be insulting, but I had already come to that conclusion myself. He read me in one semester what it took me 18 years to figure out. He was right. I loved trying everything up to the point where it became difficult.

I leave you with these two ideas. These words of advice.

1. Choose something enjoyable that you want to do with your life and figure out what it would take to get there. Figure out what you would have to sacrifice to make that dream come true.

2. Remember this: change is like a cut. It stings at first, but eventually it heals and you forget all about it, but the scar will remind you where you came from.

Thanks for listening.