"It doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want the lifestyle, release yourself from the desire. To crave the result but not the process is to guarantee disappointment."
I came across this quote recently and sat with it for a while. Because it describes something I see constantly in my teaching — and something I've lived myself as a musician.
There is a version of playing guitar that lives entirely in the imagination. It sounds like Hendrix. It feels effortless. People lean in when you play. You pick up the instrument and music just comes out.
That version is seductive. And it's completely disconnected from how any of it actually happens.
The fantasy versus the reality
Most people who say they want to learn guitar actually want the result of having learned guitar. They want to be someone who plays. They want the feeling of sitting around a fire and knowing what to do with the instrument in their hands. They want the creative outlet, the identity, the respect.
None of that is wrong. Those are real and worthwhile things to want.
But between the desire and the reality sits the process. And the process is not glamorous. It is slow fingers that won't do what you tell them. It is the same four bars, over and over, until they stop sounding like a mistake. It is the frustration of knowing what you want to hear and not yet being able to produce it. It is showing up to practise on the days when you don't feel like it — which is most days.
The question isn't whether you want to play guitar. Almost everyone does. The question is whether you want that.
Releasing yourself from the desire
There's something quietly radical in the second part of the quote: if you don't want the lifestyle, release yourself from the desire.
I think this is deeply compassionate advice, even if it sounds harsh. Because carrying around a desire you're not willing to pursue is its own kind of suffering. The guitar sitting in the corner, unplayed, accumulating guilt. The "I've always wanted to learn" that never becomes anything more than a sentence.
There is no shame in deciding that the process isn't for you. That's honest self-knowledge. What doesn't serve anyone is the half-life of a desire that was never really committed to — wanting the destination without being willing to walk the road.
What the process actually asks of you
I want to be honest about what learning guitar requires, because I think it's often undersold.
It asks for regularity over intensity. Twenty minutes every day will take you further than two hours every weekend. The brain consolidates learning during rest, and the hands need consistent repetition to build muscle memory. You cannot cram guitar.
It asks for tolerance of sounding bad. Every guitarist — every single one — spent years sounding terrible. That phase cannot be skipped. It can be shortened with good teaching and deliberate practice, but it cannot be avoided. If the sound of your own mistakes is unbearable to you, the process will be unbearable.
It asks for patience with non-linear progress. You will plateau. You will have weeks where nothing improves and then a single session where everything clicks. You will lose skills you thought you had and rediscover them better than before. Progress on the guitar does not go in a straight line, and chasing the line will exhaust you.
And it asks, quietly, for something harder to name — a willingness to be a beginner. To not know. To look clumsy in front of yourself, and sometimes in front of others.
But if you want the process
If you read all of that and it didn't put you off — if something in you said yes, I'll take that deal — then you're already most of the way there.
Because the people who fall in love with the process of learning guitar don't just end up able to play. They end up with something that belongs to them completely. A skill that no one can take away, that deepens for the rest of their lives, that connects them to other musicians and to something larger than daily life.
The process isn't the price you pay for the result. The process is the point.
I've been playing guitar since 1992. I still practise. I still find things I can't do yet. I still sit with a phrase I can't quite nail and work it until I can. That's not a burden — it's the whole thing. It's why I'm still here.
So the question I'd ask anyone considering lessons isn't "do you want to play guitar?" It's simpler and more honest than that: do you want to practise?
If the answer is yes — even a tentative, uncertain yes — then we have something to work with.