You Play The Piano

The best and happiest of living is like playing music in a way that is enjoying each note, not playing to get to the end of the piece.  I suppose improvisational music or jamming is the ultimate playing music to enjoy the process of playing.  I remember a book called Finite and Infinite Games, out of which I got that it's important to live life as an infinite game played for the joy of playing, not a finite game played to win.  Life is an infinite game, at least for most creatures except for us screwed up humans.  As an experiential psychotherapist, I have opportunities every day to experience time with others as playing music, responding to what is happening as it happens, being spontaneous, focusing on process and not outcome, operating out of my guts as well as and sometimes more than out of my head.  What helps me avoid living a deferred life plan for future success and enjoy the music is my knowing that happiness is in the way of living, learning to keep process ahead of progress or product, and knowing that life is what happens in between plans.  My happiest times are times I play life rather than work life.

 as an addition to the concept of "working the piano", a guitar instructor I had once told us never to say we were "practicing" the guitar; instead we were "playing" the guitar anytime we picked it up and plucked a string. A paradigm shift that allows me to be content with whatever I produce.

 Amen!