Sunday blogs - on Buddhist principles, imposter syndrome, and the false notion of readiness

To all my students, colleagues, friends, and the like -

If I appear to have it all together, I don't. I never have, and I probably never will.

You might call it the chaos ebb and flow developed from years of chronic mental illness, or you might just call it life. For me, it's probably a little bit of both.

I think it's important to note that we are so used to such instant forms of gratification that we miss the fact that life does not naturally exist that way. We've made so many technological advances to appease that discomfort – delivery services, smart phones, content apps, etc. - that we forget how to deal with the parts of life that slow burn. Being a musician is one of those slow burning things, and a lot of the work trudges by relative to the pace of modern life. It takes an incredible amount of hours and dedication to become a skilled musician, and even once you get to that place (place being arbitrarily understood), you continue to find yourself learning new things about music every day. All the way up until your last day on earth. There's something incredibly beautiful about this process, almost like finding nirvana. We might get little glimmers along the way after certain mesmerizing or life changing performances and recordings. But what folks forget about nirvana is the amount of pain that has to be crossed before getting there.

Buddhists and excellent meditators will tell you that the difference is not necessarily that they feel no pain. They, in fact, feel it all the time. They may have anxiety and racing thoughts despite their ritualistic practice. But they have learned to reframe it and coexist with it, and through that peace is gained. It is not because they have found some magical way to evade hardship altogether. That simply does not exist. Things like consumer culture trick us in to thinking that hard and painful physical and/or emotional labor can one day go away. Just buy a new face cleanser! Get yourself a back massage, and watch the stress melt away. Maybe you need your nails done, a new dress, a new apartment, etc. etc. But the truth is life will always be as full of struggle as it will moments of immense joy. It's just a reality, and we've only become more ill-equipped to deal with it over time since we've developed all of these immediate gratification shortcuts to distract us from it.

One of the secrets to overcoming hardship that Buddhists claim is being in the present – not the past and not the future. Folks have always said clinging to the past is what causes depression and clinging to the future is what causes anxiety. I happen to do both with a white knuckled grip. It has been huge for me to learn how to let go of my past and take tomorrow as another day, without freaking myself out about what's to come before it has actually come. You owe yourself the forgiveness that comes with time passing through. Every day is another chance to be better, and immersing oneself in that air of possibility might be one of the only things that peels us up off the floor again time after time.

I mention this through a musician's lens, but I think this is something everyone can resonate with. Life is crazy. Social media shows off everyone's good side, which makes us think everyone is doing just fine but ourselves. I can promise you, we are all not doing amazing, we are all getting through, and the people you think have it together the most might even be struggling the most behind the scenes. To be committed to greatness, whether in your work, routine, social relationships and the like, means to also be an incredible actor.

Give yourself a hug for just existing sometimes. I know it doesn't feel right, especially when you can enumerate all the ways in which you wish you were more skilled at your job, more committed to your friends, more talented, more socially conscious, more politically savvy, smarter, more responsible, and on and on...but the strongest realization one can have is knowing that you will always live with feelings like this. There's always more that could be done – in a perfect world. But that's not *this * world, now is it?

I am extending my love to all of you, and I hope you know just how not alone you are. I felt inspired to write this because I played a gig recently that I did not feel proud of, and my instinct was to self destruct and berate. All night, in the back of my head – even as I went out later to support some performing friends in West Village, even as folks in the audience bought my merch and asked me about my next shows – the idea of being a fraud and a sham echoed throughout my head. I didn't tell anyone that this was happening. I doubt that anyone even knew. One of my other saving graces has been uplifting others and recognizing my impact on others' lives when I feel mine is disappointing to myself. In this case, instead of spiraling down a deeply depressive mental path, I wrote to all of you as a means of extending my love and gratitude out towards those of you who read this blog and support my work in any form. The energy spent punishing myself can at least be transferred to an extension of love outwards.

None of us have it together, and none of us ever will. All we can ever do is try.

If you needed to hear it today - thank you, my friends, for trying.