The ‘Trembling’ Gremlin

TO BE NERVOUS AND GO ANYWAY

"The nerves won't go," Sunny told me across from her guitar. Her big brown eyes and open heart filled the distance between us strangers, and something within me began to soften.

"You're waiting for the nerves to go before you begin, but it doesn't work that way," she said. "If you wait to feel good, we won't start. So you must learn to go even though the nerves are there."

This, the opening conversation between Sunny and me, encapsulates the innocence of being a beginner held at that moment.

I knew afterwards that it would be the kind of story I would write in a journal and accidentally look back on five years later with humble affection for the person I was at that time.

But wait, the nerves don't stop there. This week has been all about overcoming nerves.

On top of singing with someone for the first time, I finally found the courage to give a total stranger a personal freestyle - a challenge given to me that I initially said yes to and then chickened out of because it was so hard (will write more on this next week). And I moved through the nerves of telling someone how I felt, even though I knew it would be uncomfortable.

And so, this week's lesson is less about overcoming nerves, but rather, learning to hold them and trust that I can't go wrong as long as I remember I must be a vessel for creation.

So. Simple. And yet. So hard.

With love from a still slightly shaken and trembling Gremlin,

Karimah x