Releasing the Notes

There are magical moments where the meaning of a song just clicks. Before these moments we sing along, blissfully unaware of what we are actually singing about. Catchy rhythms and easy to remember lyrics have aided many of us to sing things as kids that we would be horrified to hear our own kids saying.

I remember one of these moments getting ready for a talent show as part of a family reunion. I knew every word to Every Morning by Sugar Ray as a 10 year old, and loved singing it as loud as I could. On our drive to the reunion I was trying to convince my parents that I should sing that song for the talent show. It was perfect, I had the cassette in my player, I had practiced, I was ready! Put me in, Coach!

My sister was strangely very opposed to me singing it. She kept talking about how embarrassing it would be, and I was offended! My singing was good! Finally my mom reminded her that I had no idea what a “one night stand” was, and then turned to me and said I absolutely could not sing that at a family reunion because it was inappropriate.

I get it now. I am honestly surprised they didn’t say anything earlier. Then again, I was a very hard kid, so letting me sing loudly, yet alone, in my room was probably a welcome break.

I recently had another one of those moments. There was a song released about 8 years ago called “Can’t Feel My Face” by The Weeknd. I came across it from this cover by Walk Off The Earth-

Fun fact: The woman in the band, Sarah, was in labor throughout this video. Her water broke, she filmed the video, and then went and had a baby. Man, some musicians are hardcore!

I always thought it was just about intense feelings of love, maybe? I can’t feel my face?

Then this last year I started ketamine treatments for my depression. I take a version that is administered through my nose, and then I am monitored by a psychologist while I experience the effects. I know a lot of people who take the ketamine treatments don’t like to think of it as a trip, or as being high, since it is a prescribed medical treatment and not a bunch of hippies in a basement experimenting. Some friends like to call them treatments, others call them journeys, and some just embrace it and call them trips.

One of the side effects of my treatments is that my face goes numb. Occasionally I do a little check to make sure the spray is working, and I slightly shake my head. If my face is numb, it feels super weird, and I know I am under the effects of the drug.

So when the Weeknd talks about not being able to feel their face, they are talking about how loving you is a trip. Your love is like a drug to them. It is poetic, in a strange way.

My whole reason in writing this post is to share something profound that came to me during one of my treatments. Each treatment hits a little differently, and this was a treatment that started out as a conversation in my head, and ended very visually. The conversation with myself always feels like the “searching me” and the “knowing me”. The “searching me” was very interested in finding peace. I was asking all sorts of questions about why peace was so elusive. The “knowing me” led me on thought process that seemed to miss the point.

He can be annoying like that sometimes.

“Comparison is the thief of joy” kept flowing. I kept asking what that had to do with it. We talked about how I compare myself to others too much. Which is true, I am always seeing other artists doing better work and shying away from sharing much of my art. I would see other teachers at work and just know I wasn’t as good of a teacher as they were. I compared my parenting style to others, I would compare just about every aspect of my life with others around me. I was never patient enough, never righteous enough, never outgoing enough, just never enough.

I needed to stop.

Then the “knowing me” hit me with a saying that made that phrase into a couplet. It immediately resonated with me, even if I had a lot of questions about application. It was this:

“Competition is the thief of peace.”

I know competition is a sacred thing for many people. How dare I suggest that sporting events stole peace? What about being the top performer at work? What about a friendly competition between friends? Who do I think I am??

It is true, though.

Whenever we put ourselves at odds with others, we are no longer at peace. And for a lot of us, that thrill of performing and competing is a rush, it’s something that makes us feel alive.

Not me, though. I have always had a rocky relationship with competition. I was never super athletic. It used to bother me a lot. There was so much emphasis put on sports throughout my life. The small town I grew up in had a huge interest in the high school sporting events. Stands were always full for basketball and football games. There was a lot of pressure from different areas in my life to participate in sports.

I had played little league baseball, basketball, and football. I was encouraged in baseball to crowd the plate, because getting beaned was the only way I would ever make it on base. I was the kid in right field more interested in the dandelions than the game. I quit basketball after my second year because I didn’t like how I felt while playing. In high school, when I had left all those sports behind, I was strongly encouraged to pick a new sport to try. I purposely chose ones that were not well supported.

I know there are a lot of benefits from sports, I have friends who coach sports now and I’ve been told all the positives many times. My personal experiences were very different. I saw a lot of mob mentality in athletes, peer pressure, and ego. As a teacher, I still saw so many of the drawbacks of athletics in my classroom as the kids in their football jerseys were often ruthless to the other kids.

Important note: I know it is not the case all of the time. I have seen very empathetic and supportive athletes over the years as well.

Why do these things happen? Because in competition, you have to be the best. The whole purpose is to pit yourself against others to prove you are better than them. In cases where there is a lot of pressure to be the best, it can seem more desirable to do the dishonest thing to put yourself on top. It’s not sportsmanlike, but it happens.

I had a good friend who would always remind me, “if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.”

But I have found myself competing in other aspects of my life as well. It isn’t just sports, it is life in general. I have wanted to be the most liked teacher. I have wanted to have the best garden. I have wanted to show others that I was at every service project, that I knew my scriptures better than a lot of people, that I was the best at life.

This meant that I often looked for ways that others weren’t as good as I was. I looked for faults in others as I told people how important it was to just do your best and not worry about what others think. I still find myself slipping here (a friend just reminded me last night that only having a few blog posts didn’t mean I wasn’t a good blogger. I write well, and I try to connect with others, and that is my goal in writing).

Yes, competition has been the thief of peace in my life. So I am unsubscribing from competition. And I bet I can not-compete better than any of the non-competitors out there.

My biggest question was how I was going to work without competition. It seems that is what our whole work model is based on. How would I get writing jobs if I didn’t show I was a better writer than other writers? Even in education, our test scores were compared constantly across the district, across the state, nationwide, world wide…

As a writer, I am not interested in being the best anymore. I don’t need to be the next CS Lewis, the next JK Rowling, the next Brandon Sanderson. I need to be me. Nothing more, nothing less.

I promise that I will only write as a way of connecting. I will not write as a way to prove myself.

And as I made this promise to myself, that is where the visual part of my treatment kicked in.

I saw myself sitting on a porch wearing overalls and a straw hat. It was raining in my backyard. I sat there, contentedly watching a small flock of chickens take advantage of the rain as they scratched for bugs to snack on. A corn-cob pipe was pinched between my lips (I’m not sure why, as I don’t partake. But, you know, symbolism), and in my hands was a notebook and a pen.

And in that moment, I was at peace.