You Don’t Have to Learn Everything Today
There’s this funny thing about learning: the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know yet.
A few weeks after I picked up the guitar for the first time, I had learned enough chords to play a decent collection of pop songs. I thought I had mastered the instrument already. That is, until I fell into the rabbit hole of YouTube videos and discovered an endless universe: scales, modes, arpeggios, CAGED systems, Three Notes per String techniques... The list seemed to go on and on, without end.
At that point, there are two options. You can either see the mountain ahead and give up, feeling like you’ll never reach the top. Or you can remember why you started in the first place — the joy it brought you — and accept that you will never know everything, and that’s okay. You simply continue to learn at a gentle pace, because the process itself is the reward. The path you choose — and the emotions that come with it — is completely up to you.
As a teacher, I get to help my students choose that path too. It’s a demanding but beautiful task. In the beginning, students look to you for guidance. You’ve walked this road before; you know its hills and valleys well. The key is not to overwhelm them with everything that could eventually come their way. Instead, you give just enough information to get them started safely within a context — without worrying yet about the big world that exists outside those borders. Gradually, you extend those boundaries, letting their knowledge and experience grow. You walk just outside their comfort zone, carefully balancing on the edge without tipping over. It’s a challenging dance, made even more challenging because every student’s comfort zone is different. But that challenge is what makes teaching so worthwhile.
It’s okay not to know everything yet, and a slow journey towards this "everything" feels like the best one to take. One moment that resonates with that comes from an interview between Tim Ferriss and Derek Sivers. Sivers shared a story about biking along a beach. Normally, he would pedal as fast as possible, arriving tired and sweaty after 43 minutes. But one day, he decided to take it easy and enjoy the ride. To his surprise, he still arrived in just 45 minutes — only 2 minutes slower — but this time, he had loved the experience. That story stuck with me: if you go slow, you’ll eventually arrive at the same destination, but you’ll enjoy the journey so much more.
"Ride slow and enjoy the journey."
It’s still sometimes hard for me, to ride slow. I catch myself wishing I could immediately be an expert at everything I do. But thinking about it — and writing this down — reminds me: this is the way life works. There is no shortcut. You can either accept it and live as best as you can, or fight it endlessly and resent the journey.
And once you see it that way, the choice becomes an easy one.