A friend recently posted on Facebook about how in the past he had played the piano. Which got me thinking about my own past with the piano.
I took lessons for many years as a child and into my teens. I passed Grade X from the Royal Conservatory in Toronto when I was in high school and then wanted to stop lessons. Ostensibly because I wanted more time for my regular classes but largely because I was tired of practising and wanted more time to myself to do the things I wanted to do - largely reading. That's been a constant in my life - wanting time to myself and by myself to do the things that interest me.
In my thirties I was looking around for a hobby and thought it would be nice to get back to playing the piano. I bought a piano and arranged for lessons at the Conservatory with a teacher who turned out to be excellent. I wasn't interested in pursuing exams, I just wanted to play for myself. I took lessons for two (three?) years and pulled myself back up to and past the quality of playing I had as a teenager.
But there were things I eventually had to acknowledge. I didn't love playing the way many people (including my mother) do - it was always work. I never felt free or relaxed playing - it was always an intellectual thing, not an emotional one. It made me very tense - I used to get horrible aches along the ride side of my face (these stopped after I quit lessons). I was beginning to resent the time practising was taking. I had reached a point where any further improvement was going to require time and effort that I was just not willing to provide. So once again I stopped lessons.
I continued to play for myself but irregularly and less and less over time. Eventually I realized I had stopped altogether. This was at the time that I was beginning to embrace minimalism and I sold the piano - which is something I do not regret.
After all that history, the reason I started this post was to say something about my reaction to my friend's post. I was thinking how strange it was to have put so much time, effort and money into something and then abandon it. (Perhaps one of the reasons I restarted lessons was because I felt I had that background and should do something with it.). What I came to feel was that although it was something I no longer did I had no regrets that I had done it. It was something I experienced and it must have changed me and my view of the world and life in ways I'm not even aware of. Like the years I took Latin in high school - it's not something I use, but I'm glad I had that chance - Latin is a very logical language and I think the knowledge I gained of grammar and sentence structure and logic has stood me in good stead.
So in the end I feel glad of the time I spent with the piano but at the same time I don't regret that it's no longer part of active life.
