I'm learning to play the piano nowadays & I can't help but compare it with swimming, a skill I only learnt the last year.

The first month is the most tedious as you try to bring two body parts that have always been out of sync in sync. Consider swimming. First month, when I tried moving my hands, my legs would freeze. When I paddled, my hands would languish like a zombie's. It took me a month of drowning practice before my bloated body could actually cut through water and clock laps. The trick was to not try too hard, to surrender to water.

My left and right hands have been out of sync. I could only concentrate on one while practising my piano lessons. Today, for the the first time I could play the octaves with both hands simultaneously without encountering a break. I was surprised with myself and started noticing how it occurred. I just couldn't replay it. The more conscious I became of my playing, the more error prone my execution went. I remembered my swimming days. The trick to clock laps: surrender. When I did surrender, my mind was neither watching the left hand nor the right but was instead listening to the tune as it moved like my floating body in water. I moved too.

- हर्ष स्नेहांशु