What’s fundamental?
The Practice:
Back to Basics.
Why?
In middle school, I thought it would be cool to play a musical instrument and picked the clarinet. My wise parents rented one rather than buying it, and I started practicing. (In the garage because it sounded pretty screechy.) After a week or two of doing scales, I got bored and picked my way through a couple easy songs. But after a few more weeks, I couldn’t go further because I hadn’t laid a foundation with scales and similar exercises – so I quit in frustration. To this day, I regret never learning to play a musical instrument.
I and others tend to skip over the fundamentals for a variety of reasons, including impatience, laziness, or a kind of arrogance that thinks we can sort of get away with not paying our dues. There’s also the subtle impact of our media, which showcases celebrities who seem to spring out of thin air – though actually it took years for them to become an overnight success.
But when we don’t take care of the fundamentals, the foundation is shaky for whatever we’ve built: a relationship, a career, personal well-being, spiritual practice – or playing the clarinet. Perhaps we can get away with this for awhile, but there’s usually a background cost in uneasiness, waiting for a day of reckoning, perhaps with the sense of being an imposter. And eventually, when a real challenge comes, the building shakes and maybe topples.
