One of the things that I have learnt
Ever since I have embarked on this long, long journey
Is that with endless responsibilities
Comes the increasing importance of prioritizing and letting go
What matters most
And what matters less
Always in some sort of dynamic balance between
Marching towards a tangible goal and
Melting down in a binary world of studying and not.
Twelve years, sounds like a long time
So many years of devotion
Dedicated at that hard, ivory bench
Burning hours and grinding out my patience to achieve dexterity
The melodic charms that sound so effortless
(after all, what is art other than to make a monumental task appear easy?)
Like the ease of water flowing with gravity
Now, what’s left is the
Laughable muscle memory
An aching reminder of
What once was
Mine
(now no longer)
Because what came first is my devotion to medicine
My suit is that of a white coat
And not that of a pianist’s gown
And because I have little talent in placing honor to the hefty names of Chopin and Mozart
And because I have fallen deeply in love and married the life with medicine
I have given up that fluidity and grace that coursed through my nerves like another natural product of my physiology
In place of hours spent in front of a majestic instrument of melody
I have traded for sitting in front of books of mechanisms and pathways
In place of recitals and concerts in competition of musical interpretation
I have traded for hours spent in the anatomy laboratory tugging on nerve-strings rather than the heart-strings of a captivated audience
For the most part, my affair with my piano has become a chapter of the past
But sometimes, I steal away to a lonesome Yamaha when no one is looking
And laugh at my own incompetence
As I fumble through the phrases only my mind still hears perfectly
Now crudely executed by my silly, foreign fingers
Like little people that had fallen asleep and gone numb
And it is in these moments that I miss the luxury
Of time that I had to indulge in such secrete passions.
Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member Emeritus
University of Florida Fixel Movement and Neurorestoration Institute
Nita Chen is a current movement disorders fellow at University of Florida Movement and Neurorestoration program. She is Class of 2017 medical student at Albany Medical College. To become cultural, she spent her early educational years in Taiwan and thoroughly enjoyed wonderful Taiwanese food and milk tea, thus ruining her appetite for the rest of her life in the United States. Aside from her neuroscience and cognitive science majors during her undergraduate career, she holed herself up in her room writing silly fictional stories, doodling, and playing the piano. Or she could be found spazzing out like a gigantic science nerd in various laboratories. Now she just holes up in her room to study most of the time.