The Uncertainty Of Becoming

There’s a beautiful moment in the Beatles documentary on Disney+ where Paul McCartney is sitting with his bass, half-singing words that don’t really sound like anything yet. He’s searching, letting the small piece of melody he has lead him somewhere he doesn’t yet know. Looking for the little bits of magic that will turn nothing into something.

Watching it back, you can see how far from the end he begins. How ordinary it all seems in real time. He’s not trying to make history, he’s just committed to walking towards a finish line he can’t quite see.

And yet on the other side of that finish line is one of the greatest songs ever written: Get Back.

That’s what hit me. The uncertainty of greatness as it’s happening.

When he started playing, McCartney had no way of knowing where he would end up. It was impossible for him to hear the finished song from inside it. All he had was a feeling and the intuition that there was a thread there worth following.

I got chills watching it. I’m getting them again now with the song playing on repeat as I write this. Because I know I’m not just listening to a classic being born, I’m being taught a lesson.

That most of life seems like exactly that same sort of nothing.

You try to change something and it doesn’t feel right. A new habit that feels awkward. A boundary that seems to be making things harder, not easier. You keep doing the work over and over, and yet all you can hear still is noise. If you walked into the room at that exact moment, you wouldn’t think anything important was happening. You might even believe it was going wrong. Or that it was a dead end.

It’s always easier to see what we don’t have than what we do.

And it’s exactly that part that wears us down.

We assume that if something important was happening, we’d know it. We convince ourselves that if we were on the right path, it would sound more like music and less like noise. So we quit the dream before it’s manifested. We drop the boundary or habit without giving it a real shot. We stop trying because it still isn’t perfect, even after all our efforts.

But the truth is that it can’t be.

That’s what McCartney proved in that scene. He stayed with it. He let go of the need for clarity. He followed what felt right and trusted he’d eventually get there. We can see it happening. We know how it all plays out.

If we could zoom out and look at our own life with the same level of perspective, how often would we find the same lesson? How deeply would we understand that we’ll never be able to hear the finished song while we’re still writing it?

Maybe that’s the real work.

To stop demanding proof from things still in the process of becoming. To not treat the hard periods as evidence that goodness isn’t coming. To know that not knowing doesn’t mean something beautiful isn’t being formed.

The Beatles didn’t know it either.

McCartney sat with all that he had - a bass guitar and a sliver of melody - and trusted the instinct that said there was something good there, even if he couldn’t quite see it yet.

Maybe that’s the only way for a classic to be written, by recognizing that “nothing” is just the container for something great.

That was true for The Beatles, it was true for Paul McCartney, and I believe that it’s true for us…even if we can’t quite see it yet.

- Will Watson

More from me:

SUBSCRIBER FEATURE

Please enjoy this clip from a conversation I recently had with Dr. Sherrie Campbell, one of the world’s leading experts on toxic families. In the video we discuss why so many of us struggle to hold on to love and validation, what's really happening when we punish ourselves for being triggered, and increasing our capacity for love.