The Fourteen-Hour Thing

I was in a piano lesson lately, and at one point my teacher launched into a story about her college days. There are individual practice rooms on the second floor of Smith Memorial Hall, and she told me that when she was practicing for her major recitals, she would go up to one of those rooms in the morning, practice for fourteen hours, then go home and take a nap before coming back.

And here I thought one hour counted as a long practice time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Anyways, I got to thinking. Fourteen hours? I mean, I knew my piano teacher was intense, but that comment raised her intensity to a whole new level. My immediate thought was ok, a fourteen hour work day is illegal. That should apply to playing your instrument. What beasts are we fighting with? 

My second thought was, dang. I guess that’s what passion is.

I mean, isn’t that what we are all searching for? Something that we are willing to spend fourteen hours a day pursuing, something that makes us willing to go without sleep and physical comfort. Something that fills us with joy, so that we rejoice in the suffering it brings because it is in the name of greater fulfillment. But what fulfillment? Everyone is passionate about different things and their pursuit of different passions yields different rewards, but what rewards are the right ones to pursue and what matters in the end? I guess these questions are what broach the subject of religion. If you believe you can carry your accomplishments with you after death maybe you don’t mind suffering for your pursuits on earth. If you believe death is the end of everything, maybe your priority is comfort and satisfaction. If you believe there is something for you after death despite what you do on earth, maybe you do not strive for anything at all.

It comes down to the thoughts you will have on your death bed. Most likely you will regret not spending more time with the people you love, not making things right with your estranged son. Maybe you will regret not going to business school or not reading the bible enough. Maybe you will regret not practicing the piano more. If you lived a life full of discrimination or abuse or suppression maybe you have no regrets at all and your only thoughts are Good riddance and goodbye! At last sweet relief.

Well, despite what one believes, everyone has the same twenty-four hours in one day. We’ve all got to spend it somehow. And who’s to say our actions are guided by our perception of afterlife? Most of the time and for at least some part of our life we just do what we want. It’s just our nature as “instant gratification monkeys” (Tim Urban). Piano makes my piano teacher happy, so she spends hours a day playing it. Social media makes a lot of us happy so we explore it often. Sleep feels good, so we are willing to spend a third of our lives unconscious. I’d say at some point everyone starts considering the meaning of life and then they relent to put momentary satisfaction on hold for a deeper fulfillment. Parents hand over exorbitant amounts of time to their project of “kid.” Students spend hours going through notes to ace a test that will determine their success as a doctor. A couple resigns to go to couple therapy. All of these uncomfortable choices of how to spend time are an investment in what comes down the line.

You might not find your “passion” in the strict sense of the word. You might not find your “fourteen hour thing,” your crazy pursuit, your Frankenstein’s monster (which ended badly anyways). Maybe “passion” is a bad thing: your life should be rounded and not consumed by one love. I mean, what good is passion if you do not know where you stand at being a person? Passion is so fragile: if my piano teacher hurt her hands, what would she do for fourteen hours a day?

Writing this blog post is opening up a whole bunch of existential questions that I'm kind of don't feel like thinking about right now so there’s more I want to say but I won’t. The truths of life are open to personal interpretation and honestly no one really knows them.