This will be a long message, but I would appreciate it if anyone read everything I've written and gave me some advice and/or suggestions.
Here is some necessary background information about me.
I am a 14-year-old high school student who discovered Actualized.org a little over a year ago, during spring of last year; before then I had done no personal development. As of a month ago, I have completely eliminated internet, TV, video games, and all other toxic/unnecessary information sources from my life. Also as of a month ago, I have installed a daily exercise habit, with a 100% commitment, of walking for 30 minutes every day, and I hope to increase that daily exercise to 45 minutes or an hour each day for greater results, when I am confident my body has fully adjusted to the half-hour every day. Finally, I have made a strong effort in the last month to improve my abilities at studying, enjoy studying more, and learn better from the subjects I must study in school. Although I was previously a good student, I was not an excellent student, and I had very much fallen into the trap of only studying due to extrinsic motivation, not intrinsic motivation or because I had a true fascination with the subjects I studied and with life in general. Even though school has now ended, I will continue to study during the summer using what time I have, both in school-related and non-school related subjects in order to further practice studying, so I will be able to start strongly at the beginning of the next academic year. Within the next couple of months, I hope to start making small, incremental changes to my diet to improve my health, in addition to exercising every day. I have not learned much about life purpose yet, which presents a problem for me, as you’ll see below.
My current problem is this. Since I was a little boy, I have played the violin, and due to years of practice I have reached quite a high level with my playing. In fact, I am at a high enough level now that I could be viable as a world-class professional violinist in the future if I continue down my present path of practicing and improving. However, I am now at a crossroads with my violin studies. I have been pondering my current situation, and I think I have realized that I don’t really have a true, deep passion for playing the violin. In truth, I began to suspect this many months ago, but now this doubt has fully materialized and taken hold, and it has come to a head. Since a few years ago, when I started to become very good at playing my instrument, I took for granted that playing the violin would be my career, and I never questioned that. But now, I have the intuition that if I continued down my present path, improved at a steady pace throughout the rest of my teenage years, and became a professional violinist at a very high level, I would not enjoy my career, or my life. To live the life of a musician, in all of its drudgery, tediousness, and repetitiveness, to spend hours every day locked in a practice room, to perform the same music over and over again, and to do this for years and possibly decades on end, would probably drain my soul completely inside. I did not have this feeling until probably just a few months ago, but now I do.
So, the situation at hand is that I can choose to quit playing; refrain from taking action for now; or choose an alternative between those two, perhaps to continue playing but to spend less time practicing every day. Currently, my external circumstances are such that I could take action on this matter and remove the violin from my life right now if I so choose. Alternatively, I could wait to make this "course correction," and it probably would be wise to take a little more time to think about this. I have about two months to finalize my decision. But if I don't make a decision after two months, I will be locked into playing the violin for another whole year, due to a year-long string-playing academy that I will not be able to get out of after I start it. I could spend that one year slowly pondering what my decision will be with regard to the violin and learning more about self-actualization and life purpose to help me make a decision. But, the danger in waiting an entire year to make my move is that I will have wasted a full year doing something that I probably am not truly passionate about, time that I could have spent more effectively on finding my real passion and doing more productive activities. Also, there is another reason it might be best to take action right now: if it would be a wise move to make a decision now, I’d prefer to do so, because to remove the violin or cut down the amount of time I spend on it would free up my time for studying, exercising, meditating, and investigating what I am truly passionate about, if it is not the violin. It will ensure that I have all the time I need to be able to fulfill all of my absolute commitments on a daily basis. (For now, that category of absolute commitments includes only exercise every day, but in a few months I will also build in daily meditation.) By definition, if I make a 100% commitment to do something, I cannot miss a single day, and the more items there are in my schedule, the more likely it is that I will miss a day. The sooner I can remove that obstacle, the better, so I won’t get set back because I’m unable to fulfill all of my “100% commitments” on a daily basis. If I spend less time or none at all on the violin, I will have more time in the day to do everything I need to, because I will have cleaned my schedule up. In addition, removing the violin, if there really is not much use in pursuing it for me, would make me less stressed throughout the day because I have less activities to juggle.
However, even if I have two months to make this decision, there is another factor to consider here that forces me to make relative haste. In the scenario that I choose to stay with the violin without quitting or slowing down, I will have to decide to do that quickly, because if I don’t devote a lot of time and hard work into practicing at this point in my musical development, I will have much less of a chance of being viable as a professional in the future. The age I am at is crucial to improvement at the instrument. If I either stop playing or slow down, or if I take too long to decide to pursue the violin with full force, I will not make enough progress during this time, and it will likely be too late for me to make enough progress afterward to pursue a career at a very high level.
But before I can think about what course of action is best to take, I need to gain some understanding of my relationship with the violin and truthfully whether I am passionate about it or not, and what I want to do with my violin studies, since these matters are at the center of this decision I must make. These factors are by themselves already very difficult to make sense of. I am aware of my own extreme intelligence and maturity relative to my age, but nevertheless, as a young person who has only just finished his first year of high school, I lack the practical, firsthand experience to make this decision as well as I would like to. In addition to lacking direct experience, I haven’t even really studied life purpose, or how to know whether or not I am passionate about a field or discipline. Even though I have studied basic theory on personal development, I barely understand myself at all. Right now, I don’t even trust my own mind, because I have an idea of how deceptive the mind can be, and my mind is pulling me in more than one direction right now. I am very confused; I understand the need to acknowledge and admit that confusion, and I have done so. Likewise, I understand that I need to accept and become all right with the confusion, and I have done that also. But admitting and accepting that I don’t know how to handle the situation does not eliminate the need to make a relatively swift choice, in a few short days, if I don’t want to run the risk of wasting one more entire year of the prime years of my life.
Yet I also want to avoid making an overly rash decision. A potential trap that comes with making a decision quickly seems to be that I could do something that will do more harm than good in the long term, because I made the decision too quickly. So that is one issue I must deal with: not wasting any time with this decision while also not making it too hastily.
As I’ve said, my mind is pulling me in more than one direction in terms of what I should do. On one hand, my intuition says that it would be best to quit the violin as soon as possible because practicing it will not yield much long-term benefit for me, and because I could do activities that are more beneficial in the long term with my time and eventually find something that I am more passionate about. But at the same time, I feel the decision may not be that simple, and that there are many more factors I need to consider and keep track of, as well as multiple doubts and ideas, many of them conflicting, swirling around in my mind, blurring everything. I don’t know which of my thoughts and conclusions about the situation to trust, and I fear deceiving myself. For example, I have doubts about whether I truly don’t have passion for the violin, or if I could potentially still do well in a career as a violinist. I sometimes have the objection in my mind that I might still have some passion about the violin. I also worry that quitting would be a terrible mistake, for a variety of reasons. Part of my mind says I should quit, and another says I shouldn’t, and I don’t know how to make sense of it all.
There are many more thoughts in my head. One is that even if violin-playing is not my passion, I feel like I have a deep attachment to playing the violin and to the music I play. I have inadvertently formed this attachment due to a number of reasons. At this point, music seems to somehow underlie my entire worldview, and it seems a part of the foundation of my mind. Music has shaped my mind, and it influences my perception. When I hear music, I feel like there is a part of me that lights up, like a metal detector beeps when it detects metal, because music is such a deep part of me. I also enjoy listening to music generally, sometimes to a great degree, and there is certain music that I do find beautiful in very deep ways that I cannot describe. Music has ways of influencing my emotions that I have not seen anything else imitate. Another specific way I am deeply attached to music is that listening in the present to music I have heard and played in the past, in a strange way that is hard to express and that I do not even understand, evokes a feeling of deep, clear recollection of the past and of a specific emotion or feeling that is tied to a memory of a certain period of time, and occasionally a nostalgia and yearning for the past. A particular song or piece that I hear in the present may conjure up a very specific feeling that is tied specifically to a particular period of time in my past. For these reasons and possibly others, quitting the violin if I so choose will probably be much more emotionally difficult than I initially thought it would be. Before, I figured that because I wasn’t really passionate about the violin, quitting would be easy, and that when the time was right, I would just drop it like a reptile would shed its skin. In reality, though, I see now it won’t be that easy. So, when I think about partially abandoning this part of myself, leaving behind music and the violin, I feel fear and negative emotions of all kinds.
As an important tangent, what I described above might indicate that I do have a deep passion for music overall, or perhaps types of music that are different from the classical pieces I play on the violin, because classical music is not my favorite kind of music. That will take further discovery to find out, and if you have anything to say about whether I do have passion for music in some way besides playing the violin, I would appreciate some advice on that.
But, the bigger reason I bring this up is that if I do have passion for music in some capacity other than playing the violin, there may be benefits in continuing to study the violin. The overall field of music exists such that there are general musical benefits in continuing to study the violin that may be applied to other disciplines within music, and possibly to a career that focuses broadly on the entire field of music rather than some narrow part of it. The question is whether the benefits of maintaining the violin a little bit are worth the cost in terms of time per week. I don’t think anyone who will read this is an expert in music, so I don’t expect anyone to give me very specific music-related advice, although I certainly would like it if someone did give me specific music-related advice. But I wonder if you’re able to give some input about whether you think continuing to study the violin (in a reduced capacity, perhaps with only a small amount of time spent on it a week as opposed to the 10 to 20 hours I might spend per week now) would be worth my time, considering that I may yet have enough passion for music to make a career out of it in some way. Or would it be a better idea to just drop the violin completely for now if it is not worth my time, and determine what to do later if I do decide I am passionate about music? I am not certain about this, which is why I’m asking this question, but I feel that perhaps it is a better idea to quit the violin for now. I can figure out how to set myself up and possibly re-learn the violin in the future if I do decide to pursue music as a career somehow. But as of now, I feel spending even only a handful of hours on maintaining the violin every week is not worth my time, especially considering I’m not even certain I will pursue music as a career.
Another doubt in my mind, related to the above, is this: “If I do have passion for music overall, or some part/discipline of music, maybe I shouldn’t quit the violin or even reduce the amount of time I spend on it, even if classical violin-playing is itself not my passion.”
Something else is that when I play my instrument well, when I practice and feel myself making tangible progress, and when I have had performances go well in the past, I enjoy myself. This occurrence in itself seems logical enough, but this confuses me because I don’t know if this means I still have some passion for the violin. After all, it sort of seems that I wouldn’t feel good about improving and playing well if I didn’t care about the violin at all. But at the same time, the degree of pleasure I derive from playing and practicing well is not enough to truly light me up inside, and in fact while I do feel good when I do well, I still feel dull and empty deep down. Maybe this is because the pleasure I feel is mostly based on the success that is playing/practicing/performing successfully, and not much on passion for playing the music. What seems to support this is when I have won violin competitions in the past, I felt the same pleasure up until some time after I had won each competition. But in retrospect, each of these successes feels rather hollow. In the same way, I felt I chased these competition victories just to chase success. In fact, the same could be said of my entire pursuit of violin-playing. I practiced because I wanted to be very good and because I wanted success. That was more of a motivation for me than was real passion for playing the violin, and that seems a red flag.
Also, I’ve noticed that for many months now, I haven’t really tried hard at the violin. I began to try much less at the violin when I began to suspect that I didn’t have a passion for it, a few months ago. When I’ve practiced these past few months, I’ve generally just messed around and not really practiced. I’ve also not been able to focus while practicing, and my mind regularly thinks about this random thing and that while I’m supposed to be practicing. What do you think this could mean? Might it indicate a lack of interest and passion in the violin? Conversely, could it mean that I haven’t given playing the violin a chance, and that I need to open my mind to it more? (Although, I don’t think the second possibility is true because before these few months, I devoted a lot of time, effort, and attention to the violin of my own accord, and that shows that my mind was quite open to it then.) Does it mean I’m not making enough of an effort? Or does it just mean that I can’t focus? (In fairness, I do have poor concentration generally across all work and activities that I do, and I get distracted easily and often, so this might be a general rather than a specifically violin-related problem.)
I am particularly worried that because I haven't really tried hard at the violin for months now that I would be quitting without even knowing if I am passionate about the instrument or not. Part of my mind says, "How can I have an idea of whether or not I am passionate about this if I haven't even opened myself to experiencing the violin in full recently, including practicing, performing, and so forth?" This way, I feel like I may make a mistake by quitting if I am not careful. Would I have a better idea of how passionate I am about this if I gave it more effort?
However, it must also be taken into consideration that I gave the violin a lot of time and effort in previous years, and in retrospect, I feel like while I tried very hard, I did so not because I was passionate about the instrument but because I just wanted success and to be very good at playing. But then again, is it possible to accurately tell my level of passion based on memories from years ago that are of experiences that may no longer even apply today?
Of course, there’s also this one: “But if I quit now, that will be so many years of my life wasted, and I’d feel very bad then.” I have this doubt despite the fact that if I am not passionate about the violin, there’s no sense in continuing to pursue it, and in spite of the fact that if I pursued the violin as my career, I would most likely be miserable. Although it is true I would feel bad if I quit now, I believe that is better than wasting more time in my life on something I am not passionate about. I also am repulsed by the idea of quitting something I have already become so good at, but once again, I think there isn’t much point in continuing if I’m not passionate about it.
Yet, all of this I’ve written is not to say I have no passion for playing the violin at all. I can and do sometimes enjoy playing a little bit, and I also enjoy listening to many kinds of music. I sometimes derive enjoyment from playing, and that confuses me occasionally because when I do enjoy myself while playing, I doubt all of this internal debate, and I wonder if I should just continue my studies at full speed. Simultaneously, however, I also believe that whatever enjoyment I derive from playing is not enough to carry me through my entire career. Which is true?
Additionally, one doubt that my father expressed about my potential quitting is that this may just be a temporary phase where I am repulsed by the violin for some reason, a “funk.” One part of my mind says this might be logical, because I have had funks in the past with the violin where I didn’t make much progress on the instrument, where I had a kind of fatigue and apathy around practicing, and where I felt tired of playing the violin. For this reason, I slightly doubt that quitting is the best move. However, I also feel that this particular funk I am in right now, if it can be called that, goes deeper than just being another temporary low point. I feel like I am not passionate about the violin. Honestly, I feel that even through all of the lows I have experienced throughout my years with the violin, I was never truly passionate about playing. I just pursued it to pursue it, and to chase success. That probably means I no longer need to continue with the violin.
Finally, I sometimes even think that I might still be passionate enough about the violin and about classical music to stay with my current course, and to continue practicing as much as I am each week. I'm not even sure if I'm passionate about this or not, and I fear that I'll make the mistake of quitting even though I might still have a tiny bit of passion for playing the violin. In my mind, this is another potential objection to quitting: “But I still do have some passion for violin playing and for classical music, so maybe I shouldn’t quit, or even reduce my pace; maybe I should continue trying to progress as fast as I can.”
The list of doubts and factors to consider in my mind goes on. As you can see, part of me wants to quit, while the other wants to not quit the violin and thus maintain the status quo in my life, and I don’t know how to make sense of the whole situation from a bird’s-eye-view. In fact, I don’t even quite know if I am truly passionate about the violin or not. Above all, the priority in my mind seems to be to not make a decision I will regret in the future. My biggest fear in all of this may be doing something I will regret in the future. Specifically, even though I feel continuing down the path of violin-playing would make me miserable in life, I still fear quitting, or even just cutting down how much time I spend on the violin. If I do either of those things, I fear I will regret not being able to play as well as I could have if I had practiced with the goal of becoming a professional, and regret not being able to harness as much beauty from my instrument as I could have. I understand that if I want to pursue something else, I must sacrifice the violin either in whole or partly, and that that is just a fact of life, but I still fear regretting my choice if I quit and forever being dissatisfied with my decision. If I do not go full speed ahead with my violin studies, whether because I quit or because I slow down, I will not become the best I could have become at the instrument, and I fear I will be discontented in the future because of that.
Now, to finally get to the point: Can any of you give me suggestions in my current situation, considering everything I’ve stated above? Does anyone have any responses to the questions and doubts I've raised? Am I passionate about the violin, truthfully? Is it even possible that two months is not enough time to make a decision, and that I should just bide my next time for the next year and make a decision after then? How should I proceed?
Thank you for your time.
