The Work Nobody Sees
I went to a Benson Boone concert last night with my wife. If you haven’t heard this guy sing, stop what you’re doing after you finish reading this and look him up. His voice is absolutely ridiculous.
Music has been a big part of my life since I was little, and I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of artists and performances of all different kinds. Lately, I’ve noticed myself watching concerts differently. Not just the artist, but the whole performance. The talent of the band members. The lighting hitting at exactly the right moment. The choreography. The transitions between songs. The dialogue between songs. The way the energy builds, drops, and builds again.
It’s crazy how many moving pieces have to come together for a two-hour show to feel that effortless.
That’s the thing about a great performance. It’s supposed to feel like it just happened naturally. The audience sees the finished product. What they don’t see is the years of practice, the failed attempts, the experimentation, thousands of repetitions, and the entire team of people helping make it happen.
Some people watch something like that and assume the person is just naturally gifted. Maybe they are. But natural talent alone doesn’t produce that level of precision. We both know there’s more to it.
I think about this when I see someone living with limb loss out in the world doing well. Maybe they’re walking through a grocery store, playing with their kids, moving through their community, running a race, hiking, or showing up in the media as one of those athletes who makes it look almost effortless.
People watching might assume it came naturally, or they got lucky with a good prosthesis, or their situation was somehow less complicated than someone else’s.
What they don’t see is what happened behind the scenes. The pain in the early months. A revision surgery. The long stretch of using an assistive device. Walking with a significant limp. Countless hours with their PT and at the prosthetist’s office fine-tuning fit and alignment. The mental and emotional weight of all of it.
The polished version you see from the outside took a long time to build.
When our patients see someone thriving and assume it came easy, part of our job is to reframe that. What they’re watching is the performance. There’s a whole show’s worth of work behind it that nobody filmed.
The good news is that the work is available to them too. It’s probably not easy, and it probably won’t happen as fast as they want it to. But a process can be learned, repeated, and built on.
Natural talent can’t be taught. A process can.
That person worked for what you’re watching and so can your patient.