Yet somehow they all come together to make beautiful music.

Life is full of ups and downs, sour notes and beautiful ones. In life, the black keys represent all the bad things: sadness, shame, grief, disappointment, negativity. The white keys represent all the good: happiness, hope, inspiration, love, positivity. If you just focus on the black keys, the song becomes jumbled and unpleasant to the ear. But only playing the white keys results in a boring, cookie-cutter song. When you combine both the black keys and white keys, you get such a complex song. If the black keys are getting you down, remember that the positive will always outweigh the negative. And with fifty-two to thirty-six, the odds are in your favor.

One feature of a piano is the pedals. One pedal softens the sound, another sustains the sound. In some songs the soft pedal is needed to subdue the sound. In life sometimes we need to subdue our sound. Such as reframing from saying something, not losing our temper, or hanging back while someone else takes the lead. Other times our sound gets subdued when it should be heard loud and clear. For instance, standing up for the kid being bullied or speaking against discrimination.

The sustain pedal can come in handy quite often, but can also cause problems. Using the sustain pedal can hold the sounds played and being played, creating intense chords, or pretty harmonies. But, in contrast, the pedal can also sustain the sounds of mistakes, and if held too long with too many clashes, can make the sound heavy and unpleasant. This means that the pianist needs to lift the pedal to clear the sound. Sometimes we forget that we can lift the pedal and clear out all our bad sounds. We hold on to the mistakes and clashes in life and let them build until the sound is nothing but a roar of noise, not music. We must remember to lift the pedals every now and then.

A pianist can teach you about hard work, and always having something to learn. Yes, some people are born with a God-given talent to play the piano very well, but most of us have to learn. Once we learn the basics, there is, even more, knowledge needed. You will never run out of things to learn while playing the piano. Just like in life, you can always learn something. Being a pianist, you have to learn to and frequently use both sides of your brain at the same exact time. This can be compared to being open minded, and thinking about both sides before making a judgment. The only way a pianist can improve is through practice, repetition, and perseverance. In the same way, the only way we can improve our lives is through practice, repetition, and perseverance.

Whether you play piano or not, pianos and pianists can teach us valuable lessons.

Always remember that life is like a piano, what you get out of it, depends on how you play it.