Last week I mentioned to a friend that I have become serious about improving my piano playing. Last July, I resolved to spend 20-30 minutes each day in practising, just as I used to when I was first learning. I decided to work my way through the Third Grade lesson book by the end of the year, and did so. Now I am halfway through the Fourth Grade book, plus working through a second book of classical pieces.
My friend gave me a puzzled look and said, “Why?”
I was quite taken aback, and didn’t know how to answer her. I had to stop and ask myself the same question: Why am I doing this? Well, it is challenging and often difficult, but I am enjoying it; also, the discipline of practice is good for me; also, there is a lot of satisfaction in mastering the pieces; and finally, it is better – much better – than watching daytime TV.
But I kept mulling over her question and her obvious bewilderment, and I’ve decided you could ask the same question about anything we take on. Why do it? Come to that, why do anything? And sometimes I think the real answer is, that we are just filling in time until we die.
But perhaps there are more futile ways to “fill in time”, I decided, when I heard that May is Zombie Awareness Month, and we are urged to “wear a grey ribbon to signify the undead shadows that lurk behind our modern light of day”. Later that same day I learned that it was “International No-Diet Day”, when we are supposed to proclaim the uselessness of diets, and go on a binge.
Listen, if we are just filling in time, I think I’ll continue to practise the piano, play tennis on Fridays, go to church every Sunday, and take the dog for a walk by the lake every day.
It beats wearing a grey ribbon and bingeing out!
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