I Came to Fly

"I came to fly." That's a line out of song by Rhianna I think. It is a cool sentiment.

I recently read an article that said that those who logged in at least 10,000 hours of piano practice by the age of 20 years were judged to be amongst the most skilled musicians. Whew! That is a lot of serious practicing. Like 2 to 3 hours a day by my calculations. Those who had a mere 8,000 hours of practice were viewed to be of moderate proficiency and those who managed to get in only 5,000 hours were amongst the least skilled.

Now I have to admit that I was probably drawing chalk pictures on the sidewalk or pushing my cat around in my baby doll stroller during my piano lesson era. My goal (well really it was my piano teacher's goal) was to practice at least 1/2 hour a day. Even if I hit that mark (and I am pretty sure that I didn't) I'm looking at a mere 1,872 hours of practice.

The research article did strike a chord in me however (LOL). I continue to hammer (Tee Hee) away some 30 years later on a few of the same compositions... still desperately trying to improve upon my playing. I think that with only a few more thousand hours of practice and finger exercises... who knows...I hope that perhaps practice might just someday make perfect.

I remember reading the following quote somewhere, a long time ago that went something like this..."I could've read every book in the library but the seats in there were too hard." There are a lot of factors beyond our control but everyday we all have decisions to make on how to use each precious second of our days. The challenge is to figure out what we can do with them and to persevere when the chairs are too hard.