Electronic Fall 2024 | Issue 60

Beyond Wellness: Lessons From Guitar Lessons

By: Luke Lammers

Over the last year and a half, I have embarked upon the satisfying, frustrating, and enlightening journey of trying to learn guitar. While I have obviously learned a few songs and some skills on the guitar itself, learning a musical instrument has also taught me some surprising lessons about myself and life as a whole.

The main lesson that guitar taught me is that learning takes time. Simple, I know. But as a medical student, I am accustomed to learning things. Quickly. [Insert “fire hydrant” analogy here]. Guitar on the other hand, has been a much more arduous process for me. The first manifestation of this was my soft fingertips that ached after just minutes of playing. After multiple 5 minute sessions, I built up enough calluses to play for 10 minutes, then 30, and so on. But even then, the learning was laborious. When I grasped a scale, chord, or riff conceptually, it was another challenge to get my fingers to actually do what I wanted them to. This reminded me of a sort of cognitive dissonance, the act of logically knowing one thing but physically acting out another. This was the first lesson of guitar: simply knowing something is not sufficient, because our body and mind require time and consistency to adapt to change. Just as someone knows they should exercise, stop smoking, or not text their "toxic" ex, it takes time to truly absorb this truth, and to build up the mental calluses that it takes to avoid old habits.

As a new challenge, I attempted to learn the solo from the end of “Hotel California” by the Eagles. This was overwhelming, to say the least. This solo is 2 minutes and 12 seconds long, and includes many bends and motions that I simply did not know. However, after hours of practice, I was able to sloppily mosey my way through the entire solo. When I see a fantastic guitar player like Don Felder or Joe Walsh, I simply see the end product. I do not see the hours of practice that it took to get to that place. This is the same way that we may look at a fantastic cook, talented artist, or person who has overcome addiction and ignore the burnt meals, scrapped art, and relapses that plague the minds of those same people. This is the second lesson of guitar: any insurmountable task is always conquered slowly and in the menial present. Overcoming challenges occurs at the pace of building calluses, not at the pace of changing our mind. Out of the monotony of practice grows the joyous symphony. Whether that be practicing guitar, meditation, spirituality, sobriety, or medicine, the beauty is only seen in the big picture, in retrospect. This is exactly what makes it beautiful.

Learning takes place in the struggle to learn. In the failures, not in the achievement of arbitrary milestones. School has taught us that we have “learned” something if we can recall facts long enough to answer questions on an exam. But true mastery comes from applying this knowledge and getting so comfortable with it that you are able to be creative within the framework of the facts. This is the third lesson of guitar: Innovation and creativity is the true mastery, not recitation.

When we become habituated to something, also known as becoming “good” at something, it slowly becomes boring to us. A perfect example of this is burnout, which is extremely prevalent among doctors. Guitar has provided an answer for this as well, as you can begin to incorporate small changes into the well habituated roots through new mechanisms like hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, etc. You can switch from electric to acoustic, or use finger picking instead of using a pick. This is the fourth and final lesson of guitar: Find ways to overlay new learning and creativity on old habits. The exploration of new techniques within a well-known framework evokes a blissful homeostasis between the stimulating desire for novelty perfectly balanced with the depressive effects of habit. This feeling fuels us forward at just the right pace, a pace that is perceived as timelessness. A flow state*. Because I do not have a strong enough framework, I have not yet been able to experience a true flow state on guitar. But until then, I will keep building calluses.

*This feeling is described in depth in the book titled “Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which I wholeheartedly recommend you read.