Hope can also keep us detached from reality (or at least what we perceive as reality). In fact it is so addictive that the word “hope-ium” often best describes this situation. I hope so strongly that something is going to happen (to the extent that I may bury my head in the sand and refuse to “wake up and smell the coffee”).

This is the analysis paralysis. If someone comes to me really excited about a project they are working on and I don’t think it will work, do I give them my advice and take away their hope or dreams? Why must someone else make the same mistakes I made? But then we also learn most from our experiences, especially those ones where we have ‘failed’ (of course that’s the reason why I now know what to do and why I have such good advice for you). So, I learned most from my mistakes, which means you may also have to learn the most from yours. Does that mean I should let you learn mostly from your experiences too? When should I let someone fail at something because in the long run I will actually be helping them most?  You get it? Analysis paralysis and the mud is rising higher.  

As I grew up, my family had an old piano and as I played it the most, it came to reside in my house when I moved out. As it was a good piano, I decided to rebuild some of it and was all excited by what I could do. I got some professionals in and by observing them working and with their explanations, I was awestruck by the piano’s complexity and fragility. It seemed you really needed to be expertly trained in doing this work. I sadly realised I was not going to do any of the rebuilding myself. Then my brother, a few years younger than me, was given an old piano. Without any musical background he one day stated that he was going to strip it and rebuild it himself. I was fighting a raging current to not tell him that he was wasting his time because I had seen professionals battle with the fine mechanism on the piano. I wanted to tell him that he could strip the main pins, damage the springs or crack the soundboard. All I could think about was, “Don’t take away hope and dreams.” He seemed so worked up, so motivated. It was his new winter project. Cautiously I tried to explain that by unscrewing all the pins, he may strip them and cause serious damage. Halfway through the explanation, I decided to leave it. I could not find a way to make him aware of the risks without taking away hope. Instead I said, “Wow. That sounds like quite a job. It looks like you are all set and have everything planned out.”

Over the next few weeks I saw the piano come apart, and the pieces laid out in a methodical manner to be reassembled at a later stage. Soon, my brother started letting me know how things were really going.                                                                                                 

“Aggh. It took me ages to find out how to undo the hammer. Some springs came off and got stuck in the keys. But wow, this instrument is amazingly made up.” He then went on to explain the process of how the piano key transfers power to the hammer and how it returns to the board. I was also caught up in his explanation and can honestly say that I was a bit envious as well.

A few weeks further down the line, he realised where his limitations were and how much he could really do. He started assembling the piano again and said, “Wow, this is a lot harder than I thought.”

What I learnt from this is that by choosing my words carefully at the beginning, I had left the option open for my brother to include me in the process of his re-building the piano. If I had come across as a negative force right at the beginning as I explained how he was wasting his time, I would have been left out of his process. He would not have let me know how things were going and he would never have admitted that perhaps this was too complicated for him.  Besides, I had seen that I was wrong. He did not waste his time. He not only followed his dream, but also learnt a lot about pianos, patience, planning and his own limitations. By trying to protect him from disappointment, I was protecting him from hoping, striving, dreaming, and sometimes from achieving his dream. I guess in this I also learnt a bit about my own limitations as well.