Good As Gold

As I sit in front of our family’s piano, my great-grandma beside me, I grow increasingly angry when I’m unable to play my scales just right. With a final messy bang on the keys, I stand in a huff only to be pulled back into my chair by my grandma’s worn down, shaky hand. When she asks what's wrong, I respond simply by saying that I was angry and that it was the, “stupid piano's fault,” only to be met with the wag of a finger. “You can’t say stuff like that,” my grandma says. “But I’m angry,” I responded. “You can be angry, but you can’t be mean. You have been good as gold all day. Don't stop because of a simple bump in the road,” she continues. From that moment, I felt my heart ache, knowing she was right. Being mean gets you nowhere. In fact I believe those words were a pivotal part of forming me into who I am today. With a small sigh, I apologize to my grandma and the piano before sitting back down to continue learning. 

A majority of what I’ve learned about life and living has come from my friends and family. In our tall white house I learned lessons on kindness, gentleness, and how to “be good as gold.” Something I’ve been told many times growing up. In the words of my grandmother, “Always be prettier on the inside than the outside. You never know what others are going through.” My grandmother is the one who has taught me to be the exact person I want to be and has never made me believe I can’t be exactly that person. From books and movies and stories and lessons, I’ve learned to be the best version of myself.

Since I’ve become older and much taller, I’ve learned so much about how to care and why kindness is so important. Despite this, however, I do not think I would be half as good as I am now had it not been for those simple moments in front of the piano and lessons on how to be “good as gold.”