We Are All Practising Life

There is something rather wonderful about the story of a young Welsh musician who was once so frightened of singing the wrong note that he stood on stage and pretended to sing.

At sixteen, Dafydd Owain performed as part of a choir at the Wales Millennium Centre. Years later, he returned to that very stage, this time to receive the 2026 Welsh Music Prize for his second album, Ymarfer Byw. The Caernarfon musician recalled his earlier nervousness during Wednesday evening’s ceremony, admitting that he had mimed rather than risk making a mistake.

I rather like that story, not simply because it celebrates Welsh musical talent, but because there is something wonderfully human about it.

The album’s title translates as Practising Life, and its origins are deeply personal. Dafydd has explained that the songs emerged during a difficult period when he was trying to understand his own emotions and experiences. Rather than disguising those uncertainties, he turned them into music, finding moments of humour, beauty and hope along the way. The album also won Welsh Language Album of the Year at this summer’s National Eisteddfod.

What a lovely thought that is. We are all practising life.

None of us arrives in this world knowing precisely who we are going to become. We learn through relationships, disappointment, happiness, mistakes and those unexpected moments when somebody introduces us to something that changes how we see ourselves.

Yet society often encourages us to behave as though we have everything worked out. We are expected to appear confident, successful, attractive and certain of our place in the world.

Consequently, many people spend considerable parts of their lives concealing their insecurities, quietly worrying about how they might be judged.

I suspect most of us have mimed our way through something at one time or another.

This is one of the reasons I find naturism so interesting. For somebody considering it for the first time, the prospect of being seen without clothing can feel enormously daunting. There may be worries about appearance, age, scars or simply being different from everybody else. Yet the reality of a welcoming naturist community is that nobody needs to arrive with a perfectly rehearsed version of themselves.

We are ordinary people, each carrying our own histories, uncertainties and experiences.

Naturism offers an opportunity to stop measuring ourselves against expectations and discover the pleasure of simply participating in life.

That doesn’t mean confidence appears overnight. Sometimes it begins with a conversation, a shared laugh or the realisation that the people around us are far more interested in who we are than how we look.

There is another important part of Dafydd’s story. Despite receiving an individual award, he was quick to acknowledge the musicians and other people who helped create the album. His achievement was personal, but it was also collective.

I think that captures something fundamental about community.

We may each be responsible for living our own lives, but we don’t have to discover everything alone. Other people introduce us to new possibilities, encourage us when we hesitate and sometimes recognise qualities in us that we have yet to recognise ourselves.

That is something worth celebrating, whether through Welsh music, friendship or the communities we build together.

Perhaps the greatest freedom is not reaching a point where we have nothing left to learn, but becoming comfortable with the understanding that life itself is a continuing experience of discovery.

After all, the young man who once mimed through a choir performance could hardly have imagined that he would one day return to the same stage to receive one of Wales’s most prestigious musical awards.

He hadn’t yet discovered what his own voice could achieve.

What might we discover about ourselves if we stopped worrying about getting everything right and allowed ourselves the freedom to keep practising life?