Piano & Faith: The Frustration (of trying)

Learning the piano as well as the journey in faith (closer to God) is full of frustration. A sense of knowing where you want to be (perfection and excellence) and at the same time struggling with something you deem elementary such as not playing the key you meant to because you do not have coordination in your stubborn fingers or your prayer time does not result in a feeling or inspiration that was expected before the time of prayer began. A lot of this “frustration” is evident and found in our desire to be perfect and to reach perfection in all that we set our mind to.

In no stage is this desire to be perfect and our actual ability more divergent than that of a novice, a mere beginner. For this reason, this is where you see most people give up before they begin. They see the excellent examples of saints and world famous composers and pianist and the beginner begins to doubt if ever they will reach this level of excellence. They see what they assume as innate perfection and begin to get overwhelmed, stop practicing, avoid their teachers/priests, and worst of all lose the desire to want to excel in what at one time they were so passionate about and had some dream of enjoying.

These first steps are where usually people decide to settle with crawling for the rest of their life rather than learn to walk because the suffering endured blinds them not only of the possibility of improving but the benefits and enjoyment that will be actualized through the trials and even their mistakes through practice. What is difficult for me to realize is the reality of difficulty that one goes through to be great. All of the practice, doubt, anger, frustration, joy, progress, and achievement that went on in the life of an “expert” before they became the person we admire now. No, I want to complain continuously about the easiness they had in their growth because they did it when they were younger or they posses some innate quality to be excellent. This complaint does not even consider the fact that these "experts" do make mistakes and they are not as perfect as I have idealized them in my head.

I normally try to quickly master some trick or trade which always results in failure. You can see evidence of this when you see someone become really passionate about a certain activity and they exert all energies to mastering it and then nonchalantly move on to something else in a few weeks if they had not perfectly learned it yet. Unfortunately, for beginners, frustration is a key motivator for quitting. It is the fuel of unfinished dreams and low self esteem because the one who quits does not forget that he gave up on what he put his mind to, but it drives him to find something that he can master with ease: But as we know from experience nothing in life comes easy!