Yesterday I stood before my class of beginner guitar students and asked:
“Do your fingers hurt?”
This was their second class. One week before I had taught them about their instrument and how to tune it. I showed them how to hold it, and how their left hands were becoming clamps on the neck of the guitar. I showed them how the thumb becomes one side of the camp, and the fingertips become the other. They curled their hands around the long wooden necks of their instruments, pressing with their fingertips to make certain strings shorter and therefore higher pitched. I watched, knowingly, as they struggled to manipulate their instruments and their hands in this new task. It’s sort of like coaxing a baby to crawl. I taught them a fingering exercise and one chord.
“Ten minutes…” I asked them them, “Can you give ten minutes a day to play this on your guitar?”
We begin with tiny habits.
I knew their fingers would hurt. There’s a fuzzy gray line between effort and overwhelm. Our attention span as a culture is rapidly decreasing. On top of that, I recognize the need to create opportunities for success when we are trying to help someone through something difficult and initially unfulfilling. These first few weeks of guitar require a good measure of hope to get through, because the actuality of playing is next to nil. It’s this way with so many new experiences.
So, I asked my students yesterday if their fingers hurt, and about half of them said yes.
“Good,” I said, “that’s how I know you’ve been playing. It’s supposed to hurt.”
I told them that eventually it will hurt less.
“Calluses will help harden that soft flesh on your fingertips. You can either go scrape them against a sidewalk repeatedly to get those callouses, or you can play your guitars.”
I rub my thumb over my own calloused fingertips, thinking of my history with them. When I am not playing regularly, the callouses peel off the soft undamaged cells growing underneath. I press my thumb into each fingertip, registering the pain from overuse during the five classes taught yesterday and the preparation for each of them.
This morning I listened to an article in Wayfare Magazine, one of my favorite publications for thought-driven members of the LDS faith. The article was centered on the concept of fasting. The aspect that struck me at the moment was how fasting invites us to feel vulnerable before God and offers a reminder that we have hope in feasting with Jesus Christ after our absence from his presence. I was reminded that it’s supposed to hurt.
When I know something is supposed to hurt I emotionally open the door and invite it in rather than planting my feet in front of me like a girl on a roller coaster anticipating the big downhill slide. The pain becomes an integral part of the exercise. I actually become curious about it, first flirting with it, then welcoming it, then fully embracing it as part of the union of my soul.
Each morning, for the last twenty years since I had Guillain Barre Syndrome, I awaken with a reminder that I live with pain. My first thoughts, after rising from the dream state, is how my legs burn the cold burn that feels like frostbite. I begin rolling my feet and tightening my muscles. Twenty years of this and I still think that things like this will wake them up. Thenb, fully awake now, I remind myself that the pain reminds me that I am alive, that despite the bearable pain I can still function and, though it isn’t pretty, I can still walk. In ward choir last Sunday our director requested we stand longer than most of us geriatric singers find comfortable. It may be good for our diaphragms but its pretty hard on our legs. We continued to stand for the closing prayer. Because of the lack of balance and adequate neurologicval signaling between my feet and my brain, I cannot close my eyes and bow my head and keep by balance. So I have to either pray with my eyes open or hold onto something steady so I don’t fall over. Inevitably, as I stand in prayer, realizing I have to do it differently than I used to, I am reminded that this is good pain. The pain means I survived.
I can see our Holy Makers figuratively standing before our Winter 2025 class of Human Existence 101. We are all complaining to each about how hard the assignments are. They know how awesome it will be for us eventually. But right now our poor fleshy fingertips are killing us!
They look at us, smile their knowing smiles, reminding us that the early part of the process is hard:
“It’s supposed to hurt.”
But it won’t last long. The music is worth it.
