I started playing the piano at 11. I pretty much remember all the Sunday church services. I stood in awe, looking at the church pianist pressing the black and white keys on the electronic keyboard. I honestly can’t figure out what exactly held me spellbound whenever I heard a sound from the electronic keyboard. It just felt magical! In other words, spiritual! There was even a time when I started memorising the exact sounds that had been played at the electronic keyboard in my head, and interestingly, I could even foretell which sound would come next. It felt really good being able to foretell rightly at such a young age. I felt like a small god. However, there were also times when my anticipation was wrong. That really stabbed me deep!

If there was anything that motivated me to wake up early on Sunday mornings to prepare for church, it was the anticipation of hearing the electronic keyboard sound and seeing the church pianist play the black and white keys. It was so fascinating how someone could mindlessly press random white and black keys on the electronic keyboard but somehow yield the production of organised sound. It really looked like magic and sparked the beginning of my curiosity towards the piano and music in general. The church had only one musical instrument (an electronic keyboard)—no bass guitar, no acoustic guitar, no drums, and no saxophone. Sometimes, I feel like I was biased by the church music environment. Maybe because the church only had one musical instrument (the electronic keyboard), I had no option but to fall in love with her—the piano. The lack of options evolved into a singular devotion to the piano. I keep asking myself, would my heart have been won by a different instrument, say, a saxophone, had that particular instrument been present in my childhood church? I honestly can’t tell!

Despite the fact that I had developed a knack for memorising the piano sounds in church and could foretell which sounds the then pianist had to play next during the church praise and worship sessions, when allowed to play the piano, I could not replicate any of those sounds. That was very unfortunate and frustrating! However, as luck would have it, my father took notice of my magnetic pull to the electronic keyboard. He therefore not only decided to buy a small electronic keyboard for my brother and me but also went ahead to hire a church pianist (who was a visiting guest at the church at that time) to teach my younger brother and me how to play the electronic keyboard. His intention was for both my younger brother and me to learn the piano. However, as fate would have it, during the piano lessons, I realised that I was more invested in the keyboard lessons than my brother was. Later on, it turned out that guitar was my brother's thing and not piano. 

I was so intrigued by how someone could create a sound in his head and actually be able to transmit it out to the outside world through the electronic keyboard by pressing strange non-living things—white and black keys. Additionally, seeing a profound effect of such non-living things on the most complex primates (as if humans aren’t the ones who invented the piano) was so fascinating on my end. Unfortunately, when I joined secondary school, I could hardly play the piano at school, as the school schedule was packed with classes. Music was not taught at the high school I attended. In hindsight, I think it was a really bad thing for me. Nevertheless, during the school church sessions, I still kept great attention towards how the then student pianist played and always sat at a place where I could easily see how he pressed the lifeless black and white keys. I honestly didn’t really know what kept me interested in the electronic keyboard. Even when I couldn’t access it to play at school, it was always in my wildest fantasies—all the time.

The only chance I got to play piano was during the school holidays, and of course, it was at the small electronic keyboard that my father had bought for my brother and me. As time went on, due to financial constraints, my father could not afford to keep the piano teacher coming to our home to teach my brother and me how to play the piano. That marked the beginning of my journey to teach myself. I felt so bad about it then, but as of now, I think that was the best thing to ever happen to me. When you are left to your own devices, you are compelled to invent ways of learning. This process is even faster if what you are learning is something you are highly passionate about and no one is forcing you to learn (it is not even for grades). Those early years of teaching myself how to play the electronic keyboard were the hardest, but I guess they were worth going through. I had a very strong passion for piano to the extent that I always thought of sneaking it into boarding school, perhaps in my mattress or something. The things I learned from teaching myself piano have been proven applicable to many areas of my life. 

In my second year of high school, I realised that some students who didn’t know anything about piano had started learning from the then student keyboard pianist and had really picked up. However, in my case, I didn’t see it as worthy to follow suit. Why? I realised that the students who had shown spectacular improvement in the piano had made the choice to invest all the free time they had out of class into learning piano. On my end, I didn’t see this as a wise choice. I thought it was more sensible and practical to invest any free time from class in revising my school notes in order to get great grades at school. My parents were struggling to pay my school fees (I almost dropped out at some point), and my eyes were intensely set on performing really well so that I could be able to earn a bursary scholarship to keep myself in school. 

Maybe I was wrong! Maybe I wasn’t! I really don’t know. If I could go back in time, I would want to see how my life would have turned out had I decided to be like the other students who decided to use all their free time to learn piano, rather than revise their school notes for better grades. Was the fear of dropping out of school due to my parents' inability to afford my school a justifiable reason not to pursue piano lessons? Was I just a coward not to pursue what I was really genuinely interested in for the sake of getting good grades? If I had rich parents who could afford my education with ease, would they encourage me to invest my free time from class, then, in learning piano just like the other kids who were interested in it? What advice would Robert Greene or Jordan Peterson have given me at that age?

In short, the piano won my heart even without me trying hard. It haunted me then and still haunts me today. Through the church, it seduced me till I could no longer think of anything else other than itself. As I grew, my interest in piano only got bigger and deeper. I vividly remember how, in my S.6 vacation, I mustered all my brain resources to study a whole big book titled "Fundamentals of Piano Practice" by Chuan Chang. I actually deliberately searched it up online and downloaded it out of curiosity. It was very unusual on my end to intensely study a non-academic book that no one would give me examinations on. Is formal school to blame for the perception I had towards non-academic books? Anyway, during that same time, I saved up all the money I earned from my first teaching job after school and devoted it to buying a better keyboard.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to make the purchase of the keyboard I wanted. I therefore requested my uncle to top up for me (as a loan), and fortunately, he accepted. Surprisingly, he didn’t ask me to pay back the money. I’m so grateful to him! It turns out that the things that win your heart to the extent that no resistance can estrange you from them speak to a higher calling. They are calls to be heard and answered. Every one of us has that thing that won or has the potential to win our hearts without trying. You might not be aware of it, but it is there. It could be a sport, an academic subject, or even a habit like reading. It is there! It is just that there are so many things that hinder/distract us from sharpening this awareness. Dear reader, from the depths of my soul, I only wish that you may find that thing that can win your heart without trying and confidently pursue it.

Maybe I was attracted to the piano because my brain craves the order that the piano represents. Music theory is general to all musical instruments. However, when you look at how it is applied to the piano, you can’t help but see a lot of order. For example, you do not need a lot of technique to bring out certain sounds on the piano as compared to other instruments like the guitar and saxophone. Though in real life, I can be a little messy from time to time, I’ve always known that my brain seriously craves order since everything that’s not in order vexes me. 

Playing the piano is one of the few activities that requires high-level coordination of both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously. Research shows that long-term pianists have a more developed corpus callosum (the bridge between the left and right brain). After reading "The Fundamentals of Piano Practice" by Chuan Chang during my S.6 vacation, it became more apparent to me that the fact that I was naturally attracted to the piano perhaps meant that I had a brain that instinctively craved "symmetrical stimulation." Maybe that is why, since childhood, I have always had a drive to analyse or construct systems. I see everything in systems. Naturally, I find a lot of comfort in 100% predictability because it requires zero guesswork. Sometimes it can be so annoying to the people around me to the extent that they call me rigid. To attenuate this, I try a lot to be around people who are so different from me, and it can be really uncomfortable.

Science tells us that the craving for visual symmetry is a way for the brain to compensate for poor internal balance. Could it mean that poor internal balance is a characteristic of all pianists? And what does that poor internal balance look like? Anyway, recently, I found out that my love and talent for mathematics might be associated with this. Craving for symmetry is often linked to high activity in the areas of the brain that handle mathematical reasoning and geometric regularity. It is from this that I believe most pianists you see out there could have great mathematical talent. Perhaps they should seriously be encouraged to fervently study mathematics, just like the way they study music. Why? The answer for that on my end lies in helping such people to be able to maximise their God-given potential. Why would a pianist die with unused mathematical talent if it really exists in him/her? Why? To call it short, the piano feels like home for me because it matches my cognitive architecture.

The first time I was told that the pianist is the mother of the band and the bass guitarist is the father of the band, I totally just couldn’t understand what it meant. However, as I progressed in my piano skills and started playing for bands here and there, I independently landed on the reasons why pianists specifically are regarded as mothers of the band. Socially, a mother’s responsibility is to manage a home, and that comes with a need for control and the ability to be reliable. Fathers, on the other hand, are providers, and that comes with a need for direction. For this article, we will focus on the mother. The piano is the mother of the band because it controls the "internal climate" of the song since it handles melody, harmony, and rhythm simultaneously. Recollecting all this made me understand why I was attracted to the piano. I love control and value stability. Sitting at a piano feels like sitting at a control panel or a throne. Additionally, there is a sense of "becoming the creator" when you have 88 keys at your disposal. I love doing things differently and, interestingly, love originality too. The motherly role of the band, therefore, just had to grab me by the ears. 

Lastly, being attracted to the piano made me realise that I could have strong visuospatial intelligence. If you try to be keen enough, the piano is the only instrument where "higher" always means "to the right" and “lower" always means "to the left" in a perfect, unbroken line. For people with strong visuospatial intelligence, the piano undoubtedly feels "correct." And the perfect instrument to play. This is because the brain doesn’t have to translate a finger position into a sound (like on a guitar or sax); it simply sees the map and moves across it. Knowing this, as regards what my propensity to the piano signals to my abilities, gives me confidence that I can ably succeed in fields that require visuospatial intelligence. Think of data science and advanced analytics, surgery and specialised medicine, architecture and real estate development, engineering and technical design, music, writing, geospatial analysis and remote sensing, molecular biology and bioinformatics, game development and virtual reality, forensic reconstruction and archaeology, strategic gaming and military tactics, and many others. The key takeaway here is that our inclinations towards things are key compasses in telling us what we are capable of being good at and what our life’s work should be constructed around.