Obvious To Me

Remember what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to others.

It’s easy to forget that when you’ve trained yourself to see or hear certain things well, you have an advantage that those around you might not have. This is true for hearing the tuning of chords, or assessing the execution of a triple axel, or proofreading a score, or watching a presidential debate.

If you’ve done the work to be able to deeply understand what’s happening, you are probably around people who can’t see the differences you can see. As an educator, then, my first job is to say this:

Let me tell you what I can see. Then you see if you can see that. I’ll help you see it.

At first, they can’t sense it. They might not even believe it exists. But in time, they get the first glimpse of what you’re aware of – and then it’s pretty hard to stop them from working to get better.