It’s the small things that get in the way. That was my point, I suppose. Not that I needed to hammer it, just wanted to make sure I got the thought across. We were talking about playing guitar. Like many people before, he said, “I just don’t get to it.” I asked where the guitar lived. In the case, in the closet. Okay, let’s think about this for a second. Barely enough time in a day, having to convince oneself to find even a couple of minutes to spend with the instrument. I’d managed to get across the idea that if we wait for a big block of time we’ll never get there–a couple of minutes will have to do. No really. And hey, more often than not that two minutes turns into five or ten, maybe more. Bonus. And somehow all the other life stuff still gets done. But it simply wasn’t happening.
I could just hear the thinking–I’ve got a minute, maybe I’ll play my guitar, oh I’ll have to get it out of the closet, and then it probably won’t be in tune, no I guess I don’t have enough time after all. And all that thinking would be so fast, so automatic, so wordless, that there could be no internal discussion, no appeal. And the instrument would remain untouched, eventually discarded for something more sensible.
“Take it out of its case, put the case away in the closet. Leave the guitar on the couch, on the bed, propped in a corner, anywhere that you can get to it easily. That way when the urge strikes you can get to it immediately.” He told me he was quite certain it wouldn’t make any difference. “Humour me. You’re really disappointed about this, give it a try for a couple of weeks.”
By the next visit he was convinced. “I just pick it up now, several times a day, sometimes for a lot longer than I mean to.”
We did the math, he was playing his guitar for at least ten minutes every day, a few minutes at a time, most days closer to half an hour, sometimes more. Turned out at the moment he was getting more time in on his instrument than I was.
“Before it was something I only did when the timing was perfect. Now it’s just something I do.”
My point exactly.