I moved to Boston for a time and became involved in the music community there. My violin teacher taught me much more than violin. Due to many past negative experiences growing up in the music world, I struggle intensely with performance anxiety, even to to point where I would be nervous playing for my teacher or my family. I feel intensely about life and have a million dreams of world I want to create, and yet I choose over and over again to connect with fear. I might push myself to start doing something but my fear comes to tear down any any ability I had to sustain myself. My violin teacher poised the question: “what if instead of connecting to fear, you chose to connect to possibility?”
Connect to possibility… her words were profound, they instantly made me feel stronger, more capable, and more hopeful. And yet, I find myself sitting in my room several months from hearing those words still struggling to connect to possibility. I think my top struggle is wanting to feel the benefits of the action before doing the action. That simply cannot happen. As someone once said, “knowledge is not power, knowledge is potential power.” I have been playing on the intellectual field. I can see and envision things in my mind, but they are not my reality because I have not trodden on the experiential path. I am afraid and also carry many, many doubts that my endeavors will bear no fruit. I think now that connecting to possibility must be active it is going to be achieved. Connecting to fear is my reality because I actually engage with it. I write this with the hope that I will begin to possess my fear rather than letting it possess me and unlock what is inside me if I finally choose to engage with possibility over fear.