I Am Naive

I used to think of Naïveté as a bad thing, since people always rolled their eyes when they said it, “She’s so naive….” But I find myself thinking about it a lot right now. As I’m realizing what an essential ingredient it in the pursuit of dreams

When I was Naive I was free, I didn’t know how challenging and sometimes painful it was going to be to follow my dreams. I just went forth and did it. It was hard but I was successful. I attribute a lot of that success to being Naive and inexperienced. To having a sort of boundless faith in the fantasy of pursuing my greatest passion, musical expression, to the fullest. I didn’t really know it was possible to fall out of love with a dream, to get tired, to be artistically stuck, get in a horrible car accident, feel lost, have personal conflicts with bandmates, want to change directions. I just kept going like a happy puppy bounding off into the sunset. And it really worked for me, for a while at least. But life happened and I lost track of that original impulse. When I lost my naïveté, that’s when things got hairy.

So now, at age 38, I am trying to summon my Naïveté, in essence to wipe the slate clean and let my heart sing again. It’s scarier than it once was, when I was in my 20s and was just starting out.

Naivete, wikipedia states is “often describing a neglect of pragmatism in favor of moral idealism” spurred on by being “deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment”

Perhaps an effort to return to this state could be the fountain of youth, if we embrace a positive spin on these definitions.

Being Naive gives a clear and direct channel to desires and dreams, because it bypasses the editor in us who says, “no, that’s stupid. it will be too hard”

One day I woke up and looked at my guitar and I was disgusted. Because my guitar reflected to me all of my own failures, my heartache, my pain, my fear and that’s when I knew something was wrong in my relationship to my music. And I needed to look at it, to brave the discomfort and return to myself and the art.

Naivete is bravery

And as I’m getting ready to jump again, I’m realizing that if I don’t let go of the story of my past life as a musician I won’t jump at all, much less open my wings and soar.

So here I am, embracing an ideal to live my life fully in the work that means everything to me, to find a way despite all the experience and the voices in my head that attempt to worry me. I am new, I am naive, I am me.