Glad the metaphor was good; I never did enough of the scale playing, just "wished" to play

If you think hard about it, there might be a spot though where you are afraid you are not good enough, a place where you know you can't become as good as your favorite music player; there's a place out there you're afraid is beyond your abilities? It depends on if you want to be a great piano player or not, my stepson and I were talking about what we loved yesterday and studying and he was talking about an "edge" and how when he was studying engineering at college he realized he had been at his edge which is why he dropped out, didn't do the work but he didn't get to his edge in legal studies.

I think you are afraid of where your edge is personally, but as far as self-development goes, we don't got one of those, just "intellectually". However, when you get to studying the really hard stuff, personal or not, it's scary.

I think everyone can go through the motions, can do what the "teacher" wants, get the good grades by doing what they're told, being good, etc. but then you get to a place where you realize that's not what learning is about, the grades don't matter, what the other person, the teacher thinks doesn't matter, it's about what you can truly Learn. Everyone takes the piano lessons and many do the scales and get "better" but few are great because they don't "get it" what music really is (or, in the case of personal psychology, don't want it)?