Most parents believe that participation in extracurricular activities affects a child in a lot of good ways. Mine were no exception. After school, I was always being driven from piano to basketball to swimming and so on. At the time, I thought I was the world's busiest kid. But after all these years, I can easily see that I have gained some really important benefits from those activities. Playing the piano is probably the one.

However, it would be a big lie for me to say that my appreciation for playing the piano came immediately. From the time I was ten years old until I was twelve or thirteen, I absolutely detested Sunday afternoons. Of course by then, it was not called Sunday for me but the torturous "piano day." I had to practice all the morning before the lesson in the afternoon, and became totally exhausted in...