Getting to 'easy' is hard work
Being good at something requires work. If you don't put in the work you don't get the results. It seems like a simple formula but it is one that eludes many of us. We want to do something, we may even want to do it badly, but the effort required to gain the expertise is off-putting. Maybe it requires going back to school for a few years and studying, or spending hours in front of a computer typing and researching, or maybe it involves spending evenings practising when you would rather be watching television.
We pay for everything we do in life. If we choose to follow our dreams we may pay with hard work and years of sacrifice. If we decide that following our dreams is too much work, we may find ourselves paying in the future with regrets. Each of us has to make that decision within ourselves and live with the consequences.
We choose whether we will take the easy road and settle for what awaits us at the end of it; or whether we will accept the difficulties of a longer, more arduous path in order to reap the benefits that lay beyond it.
Just the words "hard work" have the power to scare many of us off. I have learned, though, especially through my piano work that the hard work pays off year after year. Every year I feel I have improved a little bit more. Work that once seemed hard has eased, pieces take less time to learn, scales and arpeggios are smoother and faster, and I have a better understanding of music in general.
Those small improvements are enough to keep me moving on to the next stage. The more I prove myself capable of at the piano, the more I want to keep working. What more can I do? How much better can I be? How far can I go? Desire and curiosity are the things that propel me forward, but hard work is the fuel that keeps my dream burning.
FOOTNOTES
ADDENDUM
My last article, Be afraid but do it anyway, was on the subject of acting despite your fears. Tom Martin of Suite 101's Caring for the Soul, alerted me
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