My piano teacher doesn’t know that I report back on my severe lack of progress. (Example: “I presume she’s gathered I write about technology, because lately she keeps asking me about noise-cancelling headphones.”) But if she read this, she’d unquestionably be giving me a bad look for that “severe lack” phrase.

I mean, I figure it’s true. However bad you can imagine I am at piano playing, I know that I am worse. I’m just okay with that because I can see that I’m better than I was when I started a few months ago. It’s like my writing: maybe the improvement is so small as to be invisible to the naked eye, but I can see it and that means the world to me.

This week, though, she admonished me for some self-deprecating answer I gave about thinking chords were something you wear, and we ended up talking far past the end of the lesson. It started with how she offered that piano players need to be positive when they’re playing, but it went on into my childhood, her childhood, and the way that we colour everything by our default stance, our default attitudes and positions.

I’m sorry to keep saying she instead of her name, but I haven’t asked her about writing to you about this.

Speaking of writing, though, at one point she put me on the spot. “Are you a good writer?” she asked.

Naturally, in every sense of that word, I said no and I think I started to say a version of that thing I just told you about invisible progress, but she wouldn’t listen. “Are you a good writer?” she repeated.

I squirmed. Actually squirmed. Eventually I tried offering that I’m better than some writers. She just looked at me. Like that.

And then offered a philosophy that I’ve been thinking about all week. I’ve been thinking about it so much that I may have worn down the edges, but paraphrasing, she said that wherever you’ve got to now, whatever you’re doing now, that’s good. You can argue that you should’ve done this other thing, she said, you can wish that you were better, but you cannot change what’s happened and you cannot know what it would be like if you were better, you are what you are and you are where you are and it’s good.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t strive to improve, or that there is nothing more to be done. My paraphrasing is going off the rails now because I can’t quite remember precisely how she took this philosophy further. But having had it in my head since last Tuesday evening, I think she’s saying you should be happy with where you are and what you’re doing. A bad situation needs to be fixed, but time spent thinking back over what you haven’t done and time spent thinking forward to how you should be better, that definitely has to change now.

I swear I’ve been in a good mood all week because of this lesson. Even my piano practicing each morning since has been better. Well, I say better…