“Let’s start at the very beginning,

A very good place to start.

When you read you begin with A, B, C,

When you sing you begin with do-re-mi.”

— “Do-Re-Mi,” The Sound of Music

This week I was helping my daughter prepare for a choir audition, which included practicing sight singing using Solfege syllables and hand signs.  If you’ve never heard of Solfege (never mind knowing how to pronounce it!), never fear.  I hadn’t either until about three years ago.  At least, that’s what I thought…

Solfege is basically a music education method using syllables to represent the steps of a melodic scale– do , re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do.   There are also hand signs that go along with each note/syllable that help with reinforcing the musical notes in a kinesthetic way.  Now, I have been a fan of the (legendary!) movie, The Sound of Music, for as long as I can remember, and I grew up singing “Do-Re-Mi” along with Maria (played by Julie Andrews).  But I had no clue until a few years ago when my youngest daughter started a music course that Solfege was actually the name for the method Maria was using to teach the Von Trapp children to sing.  

Now that I know, of course, many of my attempts to help my daughters with their music devolve into me/us singing some portion of “Do-Re-Mi.” (Or, occasionally, the whole thing… can you blame us?)  But here’s the brilliant thing about that song.  Not only does it teach the basics of Solfege, it also highlights another really important principle:  when we want to learn or do something, we must start at the beginning.   

To put an even finer point on it, we must start at the very beginning. 

Not only is the beginning a very good place to start, it’s the only place to start.   A beginning is, by definition, “the point in time or space at which something starts.”  

As much as we like to think we can bypass first steps, we can’t.

In the aforementioned song,  although Maria knew what concept she wanted to teach, she started out by spouting the whole Solfege scale, then had to slow down and go back and break it down syllable by syllable in order for the Von Trapp kids to get it. 

Likewise, even if we were to plop a first-grader into an AP Calculus class, that kid would still have to start learning calculus by learning basic number recognition and addition.   Even if the child was a true genius, that just means he/she would learn math at a much faster rate than the rest of us, not that he/she could bypass the fundamental steps to learn it.

Believe me.  I have been trying to figure out how to get around this law of beginning at the beginning for a long time.  I have tried to engineer the perfect way to start a blog from the middle, but I simply have not been able to find a work-around.   I won’t know what the middle is, or the ending for that matter, until after the beginning.  It’s a sequential process I can’t skip over.   There is no magical “advance to go” card like in the game of Monopoly.   (Of course, even in Monopoly, you have to start the game before you can get an “advance to go” card.)  There is a chance that as a reader you may not find my blog until it’s somewhere in the middle and then perhaps you can read it from the middle.   But unless I start at the beginning, there will be no middle for you to read.   See how this works? 

My brain is getting all tangled up in circuitous routes now, but the long and short of the matter is that if we are going to get anywhere in life, we all have to start somewhere.  It might be messy.  It might take a long time to get it right.  And yet,  that’s the only way anyone who has ever gotten anywhere has gotten there. 

So… what do you need to begin today? 

Is there something that has been nagging at you for a while, something you know you need to start but you’ve been waiting on… like if you just wait long enough you’ll get that free pass to “advance to go?”  I hate to break it to you, but the free pass is not coming.   That’s the bad news.

The good news? Today is a great day to make a plan.  It’s a great day to push past your fears.   It’s a great day to start something new.  No shame. No guilt for how long it has taken to get here. Every day in the past was just leading you to this point, this day, the day you’re ready to give it the green light.

Today is my birthday, the first day of a new year of my life. I’m celebrating by putting up my very first post here. 

I’m starting at the very beginning.   

After all, it’s a very good place to start. 

What will you begin today? I’d love to hear about it.