Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “We are always getting read to live, but never living.” Ain’t it the truth! I still to this day, consider myself a trumpet player. For as long as I could remember, I loved the trumpet. In music class I recognized I wasn’t the only one who loved the trumpet. In fact, every year when it came time to pick an instrument ... all the trumpets were gone during the first pass! I ended up with a baritone one year, a trombone the next and once even a tuba. Try carrying that on the bus. It wasn’t until middle school that I got my first trumpet. Ahhh, yes. Finally. The funny thing is that I never practiced. When it came time to practice, I would open the case and oil the keys, grease the valves and polish the horn.
I had the most beautiful trumpet in the band, but I didn’t know how to play it. At the end of the day, what good did that do? It took me until the 7th grade to figure out, I was going to actually have to start blowing into the mouthpiece if I wanted to get good at it. The running joke around my family was, hey you didn’t practice yesterday, your horn looks a little dull. But I learned something valuable that year, you don’t learn by preparing to play the trumpet, you learn by playing it. Life, work, swimming ... it's all the same. You don’t learn to swim by walking around the pool at some point you have to jump in. Don’t let opportunities pass you buy because you don’t feel ready. You learn by doing. Don’t let life pass you buy, while you are preparing to live it.