Swimming, Piano, and Lessons of Life

As readers of this blog may remember, my older daughter recently started taking piano lessons. I wrote a few months ago about my excitement for her, and how I was trying to rein it in and allow her to have her own experience. Turns out, she loves them. She has a fabulous teacher, but she also clearly has at least some natural interest in and aptitude for music. She's doing well in the lessons (whatever "well" means for a 4 year old...she's no prodigy!) and most importantly she's having a great time. The last lessons she took were swimming lessons at our local Y. She also had great teachers, but she didn't have much interest or aptitude for swimming. And although I think it's important to learn to swim for safety reasons, we're giving her a break from that...trusting that somewhere along the line a camp counselor will get her the rest of the way from the doggie paddle to proficient. What's interesting to me as I look at her two experiences is how much differently she behaves--and, I think, feels--when she's learning about something that is the right fit for who she is. It has me thinking about all the kinds of things we try to convince ourselves to be: to be a certain kind of parent, or a particular profession, or a kind of exerciser. All the boxes we try to fit into, and then the freedom and joy we feel when we move from that box into another box, an us-sized box, one that really fits our true selves. We can become completely convinced that we're an inept exerciser, only to discover that it's just that we didn't like running, but we really rock at kick-boxing. Or think that we can't study worth a darn, until we discover a subject that we're passionate about, and suddenly we're making flashcards and absorbing material like the A student we never thought we could be. Who knows if piano will stick, or if my daughter will eventually come to love swimming. I just hope that all of us find the freedom to explore until the right box comes along.