“My parents forced me to continue with piano lessons for four years. They ruined my enjoyment of music.”
“I get so much pleasure from sitting down and playing. I’m incredibly grateful that my parents insisted that I stick with my piano lessons.”
Well, which is it? If you are a parent with a child tearfully pleading to stop piano lessons, how do you know what he or she will say years down the road? You don’t, of course.
A good friend of mine faced a dilemma. Her son’s Little League team had an important game taking place at the same time as a momentous family occasion. Which should he attend? Because of the type of family event both her husband and son acknowledged that it was her decision to make. After weighing up all the sides, the baseball team came in second. Was she right or wrong?
The whole point of being human is that we don’t know the answers to these questions. Since the day that Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, our actions are almost never 100% right or 100% wrong. We can ruminate, ponder, ask advice and stress when we have a decision to make. But in the final analysis while we can hold conflicting thoughts in our mind, our actions must go one way or the other. Since we can only play out one script, even years later we often don’t know what would have happened had we chosen the alternate path.
When she was around five, one of our daughters found decision making almost impossible. She was paralyzed by indecision. One time, she was invited to a friend’s house but knew that our family was going out for pizza. Instead of seeing two fun options, either one of which would make for a lovely afternoon, she saw that no matter what she chose she would be missing out on something. As she matured, she learned to focus on the positive side of the choices she made rather than dwell on the negative.
In talking to young men and women who are searching for life partners, a common concern that surfaces is, “What if I meet someone more suited for me once I have made a commitment?” That way of thinking, of course, ensures never getting married. Surely, one of the signs of being mature enough to marry is being able to control one’s thoughts and concentrate on what is, rather than what might have been. Perversely, trying to keep all options open usually guarantees ending up with nothing.
We all do best when we realize that, “Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back,” works fine when choosing a toothpaste and not at all when choosing those things that truly matter. As I try to remind myself, we should work on cultivating an attitude of counting one’s blessings in ourselves and in our children rather than constantly tallying what went wrong. It will count for far more than piano lessons in determining whether or not we enjoy music along with all other aspects of our lives.
