We Have To Be Here To Get There
Photo by Simon Weisser on Unsplash
If you compare a song off of Radiohead’s first album, Pablo Honey, and their third album, OK Computer - for example, a song like “Anyone Can Play Guitar”, with “Let Down” - you can hear a real sonic difference.
From the complexity of the songwriting to the musicianship, right through to the production work, you can hear an increasing level of sophistication. Essentially, you can hear the growth and evolution of the band over the years. (This doesn’t mean that one of those songs is better than the other. They’re different and one was required to eventually produce the other. Steps along the path.)
It’s the same with any act that’s been able to achieve longevity in their field. Their later work is always changing and improving. They’re getting better at their craft, building in layers of complexity, exploring the different facets of what they’re producing at deeper levels.
But both the early and the later work are necessary - they had to take the earlier steps in order to learn and create their later work.
This idea extends to all kinds of ‘acts’. It applies to musicians and movie makers as much as it does to companies selling products and services, as well as each and everyone of us as individuals, doing the work that we do.
The fact is that, when we’re committed to our work, we’re always evolving, learning new things and changing. We’re gaining the experience needed to layer complexity and nuance into what we do, making what we do better. That’s growth.
Thing is, though, that we often look back on our earlier work - our earlier selves - with a sense of regret and embarrassment. We see the skills we didn’t have, the things we shouldn’t have said, all the things we could have or should have done better, and wish we hadn’t done that. But there’s no benefit in that.
The thing is, we had to take those early steps, make those mistakes, learn from them and grow. We had to go there in order to get here.
Because that’s what growth is. Growth demands risk. We have to try new things. We have to be ready to experiment in order to create. As such, we have to be willing to risk making mistakes as we put ourselves out there.
A natural consequence of this, then, is that we’ll do things we’ll later look back on and wish we hadn’t. Say things that we perhaps shouldn’t have. That’s actually ok, so long as our intent was right. It’s all necessary.
We can’t worry about the past and what we did back then. Instead, let’s take pride in the fact that we actually did, and we must, therefore, continue to do.
Because we have to be here in order to get there.
