Dreams, adversity, and piano lessons

In my reading and research on the subject of following your passion, I have learned that the reason most people aren't ultimately successful in endeavours they begin with such heart-felt enthusiasm, is that they give up too soon.

They encounter a roadblock, an adversity of some kind, and instead of gritting their teeth and reforming their resolve, they fold and crumple. Maybe they've run out of money or met with rejection or criticism. Maybe they've found themselves objects of scorn, or they've been told that what they're doing is impossible. Maybe somebody has made a remark, a wry comment, or a dig, that got under their skin. Maybe they have chosen to believe in what others tell them rather than in what they tell themselves.

The successful ones it seems are those who refuse to let adversity derail their dreams. Instead, they change direction. They rethink their original concept. They cool their heels until the coffers fill up and they can get going again. They let the negative and sarcastic comments of others in one ear - and usher them swiftly out the other! But they do not give up.

Success simply takes a little longer, entails more training, more legwork, or a new approach. They persist because they believe profoundly in their dreams. They visualize themselves achieving their goals, hold this picture in their heads, and draw on the positive energy it inspires when the going gets tough and the outlook is grim.

**An old dream revived**

I have written about my desire to write and to make a living from it. But I have another passion that predates my desire to be a writer by many years. And that is my love for the piano.

I took piano lessons for a few years as a child. A bad experience with an exam, the death of my piano teacher, and a year with a not-so-great piano teacher, prompted me to stop taking lessons before I became a teenager. I never stopped playing the piano but by the time I finished university I began a twenty-year period of playing only rarely, mainly because I did not have a piano, the means to acquire one, nor the space in which to put one.

Still, I never stopped thinking about someday taking lessons again, and when I was 40 years old I finally achieved that goal. In my naiveté, I had always believed that I could simply go back to the piano and begin where I had left off at the age of 12. I thought because I could still read music I was 80 percent there. After all, this was my great love, so how hard could it be?

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