But even that disappointment is a kind of a gift, because it forces me to face this reality: Gaining mastery of a new skill is mostly drudgery. You sit down and do the hard work and you marvel at how bad you are, day after day. That’s the road, and there is no end point, there is just more road, endless road. Even though we talk about passion like it’s this heavenly blast of light and sound that drives you forward to greatness, real, genuine passion often feels more like some Cormac McCarthy novel where things go from bad to worse and you never arrive anywhere at all. But somehow (also like a Cormac McCarthy novel!) the bleak trees, the pavement, the bitter cold wind, all of these things are weighty, lustrous. You are almost dead of course, always almost dead, but somehow more alive than ever.
That’s where I want to live. Not in a daydream, not aimed at an illusion, not hoping to be saved or transformed, not trying to impress, not craving more and more and more. I don’t need a stage or an audience. I just want this dining room, the dogs pacing, the heater kicking on, the bare branches outside. To sing one line and stop to cry. To treasure this one small thing. To feel the press of this moment, everything weighty, everything lustrous. To take in this empty stretch of road: pointless, endless, doomed, and more alive than ever.