A while ago i've stumbled upon this photo
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It is a photo of me picking up the courage to ''sit in'' on a jazz gig my friend was playing . The reason i think this picture is strange is that i do not do that very often . In fact this was the only time i've ever done it . Reason being is that i'm never confident enough about my playing to respond to people inviting me to guest for a song or two . And i think that is a bad attitude to have .
We all have our insecurities about ... well , whatever . Whether it's our looks or our skills , everyone must have faced this inferiority complex at some point in their life . I was pondering for a while where does that feeling come from , and came to a conclusion that we are afraid of shattering illusion we have about ourselves . In my particular situation , i was afraid that people will recognize the flaws i have in my playing and that the illusion i have created about myself won't be reflected in other people's minds . The illusion being that i'd like to present myself as the most amazing musician they've ever heard live . That is a very unrealistic and pretentious logic to follow , but the most dangerous thing of all , is that it is ruining you as a creative and growing being .
I lost track of times when i could have gone to a jam session , or workshop or any other place where i could learn and grow as a musician because i was afraid that i would expose my weaknesses and thus lose the imaginary ''reputation'' i had among my fellow musicians . Frankly , that is all a bunch gibberish . We are all flawed no matter how much we may practice our butts off , and judging by the logic i had in my mind you would never go out in the world and do something with the skills you have because they are not good enough . If you are too hard on yourself like i am , that ''good enough'' basically means never since the ''good enough'' means perfect , and perfection is still very alien concept to me .
I think we should give ourselves some break from all the imaginary pressures we put on ourselves and accept ourselves as we truly are right now . Not resent our present self just because it doesn't meet some abstract ideals we've come to ascribe to us . And also , try to expose ourselves a bit more , not be stuck in this mind cage until we think we won the night and from then on we can openly express ourselves . That day may actually never come , and you are missing out a lot of the good things in the meantime . As a matter of fact , opening ourselves to the society will bring about more rapid development of our skills , whatever we want those to be . Going back to the photo at the beginning , after i played a couple of songs with the band that night i felt super awesome ! The band seemed satisfied , the audience seemed to like it and it was generally very nice evening . It's strange how it didn't encourage me to be even more eager to perform during the ''high pressure'' situations so to speak and instead it was actually the only time i 've ever done such a thing . This just goes to show how strong our inner constraints can be and how much effort we should put in order to combat them . I , myself , am still trying to , although i am totally aware of all the things i do wrong .
I hope you found this text insightful in a sense that you might recognize some of the things you do as well in similar situations , and hopefully it might trigger some introspection .