I ask myself a lot, “why am I doing this?” In fact, I ask myself a lot of questions daily, all stemming out of why. The long list of these questions asking why is way too long for a blog post, even too long for a rant. But a few tend to be, “Why do I play tuba? Why do I need to practice 4+ hours a day? Why do I need to write music? Why have a website? Why write a blog?” and most importantly, “Why would I do all these things, and somehow think I have something valuable to offer other people?” That is the most puzzling question I ask myself daily that, quite honestly, tends to yield the most simple answer; because it’s what we do.

Now when I say we, I’m talking about musicians in specific. But really, it is true for all people, all over the world, no matter our background, cultures, etc. This everlasting cycle of learning and sharing, that begins with us as we’re born and follows us to the day we die. We as humans long to learn and share, to absorb and emit, and to study and teach. From our first breath, we are already studying and absorbing everything we can about our new environment so we can simply survive. Every action we make is an imitation of our parents and others that make up our world (teachers). We slowly start to master certain skills such as walking, talking, moving etc. until we finally become the ones others learn from. We become teachers, whether we know it or not. When speakers come to schools, talking with students about what they want to be, only a few will say they want to be teachers. The simple fact is, we ALL are teachers, especially when one starts a family. Teaching is inevitable, even when we may not consider ourselves masters of a certain skill. The young must be taught by the old(er). Anyone older or more experienced than the young learner, becomes a teacher (found in a tremendous amount of variability in skill levels).

I would imagine at this point that many of you are starting to understand my point. Even though the world is filled with individuals that far surpass our own capabilities, we all are responsible for sharing what we have learned through our own experiences, because ultimately, we all have a unique experience worth sharing.

So the purpose of this blog is not to show the world how much I know, but rather what I have learned through my experiences and current vantage point, that could be of use to someone else. In addition to this, I (the teacher) consider myself to be a life-long learner, and hope this whole process will help me make sense of my own wonderings and questions. We are all in this together, like it or not.

*Now you can dry your eyes from the weight of that inspirational bomb.

As I sit here on an early Sunday morning in January, my mind tosses and turns, thinking about the many other things I could be doing. My mind would tell me to substitute could for should, reminding me that someone else out there might be “hitting the gym” early, sharpening their skills at becoming the next great somebody. But as I meditate on that humbling fact, I’m also drawn to the definition of success. I am sure that most of us have heard, from an early age that “the early bird gets the worm” or “the price of success is hard work” or “no sacrifice, no victory” etc. (I don’t mean to quote an endless world of quotes about hard work).

By poking fun at this mindset, in no way am I suggesting the road to success is the opposite; a healthy dose of natural ease with a dash of endless indulgence. What I hope to do, is examine what success really means. Is success, simply, the reward for working hard, eventually leading to an easy life? Or is success something different?

Before we get too far into the rabbit hole of “defining success,” a topic, upon which, volumes upon volumes have already been written, I’d urge us all to mull over that question for a while. What does success really mean? And especially, what does success mean to me and what I want to do?