Close, But No Star

I started taking piano lessons at around the age of five or six. At that adolescent stage, it seemed like a fun little gimmick of a machine to produce some cool sounds. At the time, it also seemed to be not only a joy-inducing, but also an easy instrument to play. I’m not sure if it the original pace of learning songs was slow, or if the 2+2’s of piano pieces were actually just unchallenging, but I breezed through the beginner practices for piano with the full on excitement of a newly inflated balloon.

As an incentive to motivate her students to give their full effort into practicing the piano, my piano teacher developed a reward based system based on the quality of the student’s playing at the actual lesson. In the case that the student accrued four satisfactory checks, four weeks consecutively, they would be awarded by having the ability to pick a reward out of the prize drawer. There were all sorts of prizes: candy, pens, toys, hmm… thinking back, they were all simple, lackluster that nonetheless appealed as much as anything to the childhood mind. But the great point was that by devising this reward system, my teacher successfully beckoned her students to think twice about neglecting to give their full effort to practicing the piano.

For the first year or two, I’d always amass four consecutive stars. Every four weeks, I’d have the opportunity to choose between Charleston Chew and Starbursts. Possessing the interest that one would after they purchased a brand new car, I was attentive to all the minutiae of the delightful little pieces.

But just as enthusiasm of a new car’s owner wanes as the car becomes old, less revolutionary, and more repetitive, I had begun to feel gradually less interested in playing the piano, almost comparing it to a chore or a burden. But despite the decline of my interest, my will to play the new pieces continued to be strong. With every new composition, I discovered the nice, special perks that they possessed that allowed them to stand out among the other pieces.

Therefore, I was particularly devastating when, on one rainy day in March, I found myself struggling to perform a certain piece while I was trapped in the forest that was my piano teacher’s house. I couldn't play the notes correctly. My fingering was off. My counting was offbeat. The domino effect had discombobulated the precision of the entire piece.

What’s going on? Is she going to not give me that star? I need to step it… what’s this? She’s telling me I don’t deserve it this time? Nonsense. Poppycock. How could… Never have I ever… Why…

Yet soon, this flabbergast had turned to dejected woe. I was bawling at the thought of failing something that had seemed so humdrum yet elementary to me.

As I sobbed through the car ride home to the angry disappointment of my dad, who had shared my expectations for novice piano playing, I realized that it was a stupid way to go on. I had to move forward without looking back in anger. Having fallen off my high horse, I realized that the difficulty of my piano pieces was constantly increasing. Now, I’d have to adjust my effort to the piano to stay proportional to its difficult.

By changing my mindset and developing a new plan to go about my piano practicing future, I had rebounded from my irrecoverably lost star. I had set my mind onto a different goal: to retrieve the new star, not think about losing my old one.

What’s going on? I’m in the middle of playing the piano. Hey brain, stop being such a distraction. Get back to practicing.

"Earth and Space, Living World, Human Body, The Way We Live, Science and Technology, History, Atlas of the World"

As I try to remember the first book I ever flipped through, I realize that what happened less than ten years ago seems to be such a colossal eternity ago that I will never be able to connect all the dots of my childhood. Yet I can remember the one thing that piqued my adolescent interest what was going on in the “real world:” an illustrated encyclopedia. Encompassing topics from the human body to space, the massive hardcover put me through many distinct polarizing emotions; one moment I’d be cheerfully captivated by lymph nodes and the next I’d be earnestly pondering my fate after discovering that the universe was nearly 15 billion years old (I’ll admit this made me sleepless on countless night). Being a naïve child, everything I read seemed to be an amazing breakthrough to me.
 Since I was reading the encyclopedia at such a young age, it is obvious that for a large part, I wasn’t really reading; I was actually mesmerizing myself with the hordes of vivid visuals. From the human skeleton to jambalaya, it was all a huge phenomenon to me. But there is one specific drawing that I can hauntingly recall. It was a sketch of the instant before beheading of King Charles I of England. At that age, I was suddenly struck by the devastation of how a powerful king would lose his vision of the earth forever by one swift chop of an axe. Flipping through later, I read a short bit of how Americans fell from “riches to rags” thanks to “stocks.”

What the heck were “stocks?” At the time, I thought to myself, how could anyone lose all their wealth by the “crash” of a single word? Even today, I still do not fully grasp the concepts of economics or “total equity” or Wall Street. Yet there was one thing I held to back then that I still grasp today. I wanted to strive for a decent future. Because reading about the eerie, infinite depths of the universe, of the chilling and swift death of Charles I, and of the scary reality of families going “cold and hungry” because of “stocks,” I realized that my life was fitted and limited. Reading the short blurbs of great historical figures, I noticed how no one lived past ten decades yet everyone had built a destiny for themselves in such a short scope of time. Looking back, I see how this illustrated encyclopedia really molded my perceptions of the world and of my life. I can safely attribute my ambition of my future to my enthrallment at the wonders human body. From the moment I flipped out of the encyclopedia and into the moving and increasingly (though as a kid, not really) real world, I’ve been continually working towards a medical path without getting beheaded by an axe.