The Power of Acceptance

How a basketball player, writer, and pianist dealt with the loss of three fingers.

Marty Nemko
Nov 6 · 2 min read
Marty Nemko

A while back, three of my fingers became pretty much unusable. I had been a basketball player my whole life and had to stop. I write a lot and so now type with just seven fingers, making many more errors. I’m a professional-level pianist and have had to scale back how I play.

I would have thought it would have been psychologically difficult to have to give up basketball but because it was inevitable, I somehow just accepted it and substituted taking vigorous hikes with my dog. I find myself not missing basketball at all.

Regarding typing, I just accept that in reviewing drafts, I have to fix more typos. Honestly, I don’t feel any self-pity, I just do it.

When playing the piano, I decided to pretend that I still had 10 fingers and then when I reach something I can’t play, I just, in the moment, played a simpler version. I didn’t take any lessons to adapt, I just did just-in-time adaptation. And when the fingers caused mistakes, and they do, I just accept it. I choose to play with full passion even though it leads to more mistakes than if I try to be note-perfect but more sterile. I’ll leave to you if that choice has been at all successful. (See the link below.)

In short, acceptance of the inevitable without drama or self-pity has, for me, been the key to being able to, with minimal sadness, move forward.

I ad-lib on this topic as well as play my mom’s favorite song, Autumn Leaves, on YouTube.

Career and personal advisor Dr. Marty Nemko’s 12 books including The Best of Marty Nemko (3rd edition) are available.

Marty Nemko

Written by

UC Berkeley Ph.D, specialist in career and education issues.

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