Practice: Returning to What You Think You Already Know

Importance of Practice

Every morning, I read a chapter of the Bhagavad Gita.

Do I know the story?

Yeah.

I know it pretty well.

I’ve read the book many times. I’ve underlined things, thought about things, gone back to things, probably misunderstood a few things, understood a few others, and then gone back later and realized I hadn’t understood them quite as well as I thought I had.

So why keep reading it?

Practice.

But not practice in the sense of grinding away at something until I finally get it right.

Practice as returning.

The Gita may be the same book tomorrow morning.

But I won’t be the same guy reading it.

Something will have happened between now and then. Maybe something small. Maybe something important. Maybe I’ll simply be in a different mood.

And because I’m different, a passage I’ve read twenty times may suddenly say something I wasn’t ready to hear the other nineteen.

I love that.

I Already Know This

Years ago, back in the ’80s, I studied with jazz guitarist John Stowell.

Great player. Great guy.

A big part of what we worked on was using jazz melodic minor scales to navigate altered dominant chords.

During the lessons, John would write things in a notebook for me.

That notebook became my Jazz Bible.

I learned those melodic minor scales.

Up the neck.

Down the neck.

Arpeggios.

Fingerings.

Harmony.

I knew the material.

So, naturally, I had mastered melodic minor and could move on with my life.

Yeah, right.

Knowing where the notes were was one thing.

Being able to speak with them was something else entirely.

That took years.

Practice rooms.

Gigs.

Good solos.

Bad solos.

Very questionable solos.

Eventually the information started becoming language.

I wasn’t thinking, Okay, now I’m going to use this scale over this chord.

I was beginning to hear it.

Converse with it.

Live inside it.

That’s different.

Importance of Practice: Photography Works the Same Way

I learned the exposure triangle a long time ago.

Aperture. Shutter speed. ISO.

I know what they do.

I know how depth of field works.

I know how a slower shutter can create movement.

I know how an aperture can change not only exposure, but the entire feeling of a photograph.

Does that mean aperture has nothing left to teach me?

Not even close.

I can take a camera out today and see something I haven’t seen before.

A particular lens.

A particular light.

A particular person.

And suddenly an aperture I’ve used thousands of times does something that makes me think:

Well, look at that.

Practice.

Same tool.

Different day.

Different photographer.

And Then There’s Writing

I’ve loved writing since I was a kid.

And man, being able to take something that’s living inside your head and somehow shape it into words another person can understand?

That’s kind of amazing.

I do think writing is one of the gifts I’ve been given.

But gift doesn’t mean I came out of the delivery room with a pen in my hand and asked where the newsroom was.

I’ve had to write.

A lot.

And delete.

A lot.

And rewrite.

And stare at sentences wondering why something that sounded brilliant in my head now reads like instructions for assembling patio furniture.

Practice.

The gift may give you the desire.

Practice helps you learn how to use it.

Maybe We Don’t Graduate

I think that’s the thing I’ve been noticing.

We have this tendency to believe we’re supposed to finish learning things.

Okay, I learned aperture.

Check.

Melodic minor.

Check.

Bhagavad Gita.

Read it.

Reality.

Figured that out Tuesday afternoon.

That’s adorable.

The older I get, the more it seems like the things that matter most don’t really work that way.

You don’t finish them.

You develop a relationship with them.

Music.

Photography.

Writing.

Spiritual practice.

Your own mind.

Life.

And relationships require returning.

You don’t say, “I talked to my friend in 1998. I already know him.”

You keep meeting.

Maybe practice is like that.

Not endlessly repeating something because we failed to learn it the first time.

Returning because both sides of the relationship keep revealing something new.

Showing Up

And not every practice session gives you fireworks.

Some mornings I read the Gita and nothing dramatic happens.

Sometimes I play guitar and don’t discover the secret chord.

Sometimes I take the camera out and don’t make a photograph I care about.

Sometimes I write and… well.

Let’s not talk about those days.

But I showed up.

I maintained the relationship.

Importance of Practice

And then every once in a while, something opens.

A sentence.

A chord.

A photograph.

An idea.

Something I’ve encountered a hundred times suddenly becomes new.

Maybe that’s because it isn’t really the thing that changed.

Maybe I did.

Tomorrow morning I’ll read another chapter of the Bhagavad Gita.

I know the story.

I know many of the passages.

But I haven’t read tomorrow’s chapter yet.

Because tomorrow, the guy reading it will be somebody I haven’t met.

So I’ll show up.

Practice.