Of music

A student in a music faculty was coached by a renowned pianist and professor. One day, he walked into the class and saw a new set of music sheet at the piano. ‘This is extremely difficult….’, he spoke to himself as he browsed through them. He did some stretching and began to play the notes, only with many pauses and mistakes because of the high level of difficulty. ‘Not good enough still. Go back and practice harder!’ The professor told the student before dismissing the class.

The student practiced for a week. The next lesson in the following week came. Just when he was about to begin playing for the professor’s comment, the latter, without mentioning anything about the previous week’s lesson, gave him another set of music sheets. This set was harder and more technically demanding than the previous one. The student once again struggled through the whole piece.

In the third week, the same thing happened again. Each time, he got troubled by the new piece of music and took it back in the end for practice. And when he went back to class the next time, he had to face another piece twice more difficult than the previous one. Feeing not able to catch up, he felt uneasy and angry.

3 months passed and he could not take it anymore. He felt the need to ask the professor why the torture to him. However, this time the professor took out the earliest piece, gave it to him and said, ‘Play this!’, gazing at him in his eyes with full confidence in him.
Something amazing happened! To the student’s surprise, he was able to play the piece with such profound skill and technical precision. Next, the professor gave him the second lesson’s and the same thing happened. He once again gave an extremely high standard recital……… At the end of all the recitals, the student looked speechless at his teacher.
‘If not for this continual challenge, you are now still practicing on the earliest piece and will not be showing this kind of skilful performance today’, the professor said to him.

If we keep thinking about the difficult challenges we are facing, we can miss out the fact that we are also learning and improving at the same time during each struggle. How can one show improvement without any obstacle?

As a grown-up recalls his past, those naïve and inexperienced younger days are actually the ones that made up today’s maturity. This is how the student felt when he looked back at the earliest piece he had practiced before. People are used to displaying their most familiar and strongest area to others and when faced with a new question, they got extremely anxious. However, the difficulties you are conquering are actually shaping and training you up into the capability you will display. Therefore, be thankful to obstacle, be thankful to difficulty. And you will be able to jump over the hurdles in your life.