by Jared Adamson…

As I sit down at my piano early one morning, I realize that this day, my future, my outlook or forecast is just like this ancient instrument.

88 keys = endless possibilities

• I could have a happy tune to wile my worries away.
• I could have a minor key of sorrow and suffering.
• I could be on a bright arpeggio ascending toward the limitless sky.
• Or maybe I could hit a wrong note.

But is it really a wrong note?

Edison said, upon success with the lightbulb, “I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways it won’t work.”

Maybe that’s what wrong notes are, just another way it’s not working.  Learn from it.  Don’t play it the next time.

And maybe even the note itself is not so much wrong as much as it is misplaced.  If I play in the key of C but strike an unintended F# (that’s F sharp, not F hashtag), it’s not that the F# is a bad note—it’s just out of context.  It’s piece to a different puzzle.  It’s the wrong ingredient for this casserole.  I love catsup and chocolate, but they’re hardly interchangeable or mixable.

So if in your day you think you’ve screwed-up, mis-stepped or fallen flat on your face, don’t dwell on that moment.  Fix the note and keep moving forward in your fantasia.

And if you can’t get away from that misstep—for we acknowledge that circumstances keep us in places for longer than we’d like sometimes—modulate to a new key where that F# is the primary harmony for a new peaceful existence.

You can do this.

Like a piano, you have endless possibilities.

Jared Adamson is the Minister of Worship and Creative Arts at Centerville Christian Church in Centerville, IN and a member of the DIVA Board of Directors.  Studying voice, composition, organ and improv, he has a Bachelor of Music in Church Music with a double major in Bible and piano from Cincinnati Christian University where he later served as an adjunct professor in the music and worship department.

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