I remember a time when our youngest daughter was trying to learn how to play a D chord on the guitar. She asked me how to place her fingers on the fretboard and I showed her.
A couple of hours or a day later I was watching her play and noticed that she was playing the D with incorrect fingering and suggested the correct way to play it.
“But that’s not how you showed me how to play it before,” she said.
“Not true. I would never have showed you how to play it that way,” I responded. “I’ve been playing and teaching guitar for over 40 years.”
“Well, you did,” she said.
“No way,” I replied.
This went on for a few more minutes with two very stubborn people emphatically refusing to back down. This led to tears and frustration, a classic standoff of YES and NO that can never be resolved without one or both people saying, “Y’know. This isn’t worth arguing about.”
Yeah, right.
The Yogis say that in the end the hardest part of becoming enlightened is learning to give up one’s pride. A student who has learned everything will puff out his chest and the teacher will say, “Back to the drawing board, Charlie.”
When we spend time together, it’s inevitable that we will come to a juncture like the one described above. It’s a test that we get to take and retake a thousand times with a sense of sadness, anger or confusion. Eventually, though, it dawns on us that this is the time for kindness, not righteousness.
My mother taught me a valuable lesson when it comes to communication: if at first you argue, return to the table with a desire to mend fences even if that means backing down. She wasn’t perfect at it, nor am I, but it’s almost always leads to figuring out why we’re fighting in the first place.
Usually, it has nothing to do with the D chord.
