Fun is an internal experience.


Fun is not a quality of anything in this universe.


Therefore a piano lesson cannot be fun. It cannot be boring either.


A person, however may have an internal experience – labelled as fun or boring – when attending a piano lesson.


So the correct way to express oneself is not: “This is boring/fun”, but rather, “I am experiencing boredom/fun as I face this”.


This is not just being precious about language. The consequences are staggering.


If you believe your internal reactions to things are actually qualities of these things, you will soon start hating things to which you react with unpleasant internal experiences. And you will become obsessed with things to which you react with pleasure. So in the end, all is suffering.


On the other hand, if you perceive the truth, than you will also know that it is up to you to decide and choose with which internal experience you will respond when faced with whatever the universe throws at you.


If you decide that you will be bored there is no amount of teacher’s effort that will make you experience fun. (Try making a depressive have fun).


Likewise it would be wrong to say: “So and so post made me angry”. In fact there is no power in the whole universe that can force you to have a internal experience you do not wish to have. The correct verbalisation has to be: “As I read so and so post, I decided to experience anger.”


This is hard to digest because it throws back right at us the responsibility for our inner states. We can no more blame the teacher for the lesson being boring. And the teacher cannot bask anymore in the pride of having caused fun in his/her students.


Which is why ultimately fun cannot be defined in terms of things and processes in the Universe. There is nothing in the whole universe that would guarantee universal fun – this could only be possible if fun was a quality of things. But since fun is an internal response different people will respond differently to the same thing, and even the same people will respond differently to the same thing at different times in their lives.


So unless a student at some point in his/her musical career decides to respond to practice and lessons with “fun”, there will be little hope for progress.


One last point: As a piano teacher my main aim and goal is that my students learn to play the piano. It is not to make them have the internal experience called fun. In fact I do not believe that I or anyone else has the power to induce such experience on anyone. At the same time no one is ever going to learn the piano unless they start responding to it with “fun” (or pleasure, or fulfilment, or whatever terminology you may want to use).


Nothing is interesting if you are not interested. (Helen MacInnes)


Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies ongoing activity (Paul Goodman).