Growing up in the 80's, Friday Night Music Videos, and then MTV, were the big things. I'd get so excited to see Aha! or Billy Idol, Michael Jackson, Madonna, and the rest. Big hair metal was amazing. Guns n Roses was still underground. Metallica was counterculture.
Practicing my scales, arpeggios, and Greensleeves with my piano teacher, I'd drift off to wonder,
How do these people make the music they do? They seem so far off from whatever it is I'm doing.
I'd try to make up this, that, and the other. My first composition was something of a series of notes running up and down a scale in some key that I made sure to include sharps and flats, just to make sure it was complex enough.
Eagerly, I showed it off to my piano teacher. She patiently, kindly, and perhaps even sincerely, said something along the lines of, "That's nice," followed by a, "Now let's get back to work."
“But, but, I'm not rocking out like Poison yet!"
I didn't say.
We are so accustomed to reward. The end goal, the vision of whatever we think will bring us joy, happiness, if not some unconscious fantasy of immortality.
The trope to focus on a journey over its reward, persists as a trope because we so often don't live it.
Students often wonder about the WAVES approach to "dealing with" ADHD. But it is not dealing with. It is practicing ADHD.
What the heck good is that?
When practicing at the piano, we do eventually find a place of ease within the notes. We discover our voice. Regularly, I hear others tell me that they can instantly recognize my style of playing. It's not that I deliberately sought it out. I practiced the fundamentals.
Over time, whatever unique bubble I represent in our current wave of existence manifests on its own. My job is to be aware and remove impediments where I can, regularly over time.
This is also called practice.
Not only that, but I enjoy it. I enjoy the engagement of challenge in the small and large, finding a possible trailhead of mastery, feeding the play that resonates with the meaning within and often with others.
The same thing happens when we practice our way of being. ADHD, for example, is a flow through a thin passage of the Now, strong and powerful, or stumbling and turbulent. Air within a flute. A bow across a string. A tap on the drum.
We don't manage ADHD. We practice it. And in so doing, we can find our strength and power, and more importantly, our own voice.
When hearing the simple ease of Frank Sinatra's almost spoken but clearly sung tunes, when we watch the smooth moves of Michael Jackson's feet, when we know those moments of care, calm, play and mastery all hidden in that gentle, barely perceptible smile of a craftsperson at work, we know they are in love with the craft, the practice itself.
Tune in to this week's Rhythms of Focus Podcast - The Waves of Focus are the Suzuki for Practicing ADHD subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and let me know what you think.
Kourosh