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What Selling My Digital Piano Is Teaching Me About the ‘True Value’ of Things
I once sold my digital piano to a friend for N150,000 (about $400.) On the day I sold it, I woke up early, dismantled it and hid it in an out-house so my kids wouldn’t know. There was something about dismantling it in their presence that I wasn’t willing to confront. At the time I sold it, it hadn’t been about the money — not at all. My architectural practice was doing well, and I didn’t need that money at all. After I sold it, I invested the money in shares on the New York Stock Exchange. My motivation at the time I sold it was clear — it no longer served its purpose.
4 years before I surreptitiously dismantled this once beloved possession and waited for the UBER my friend was sending to pick it up, I had seen the piano in a piano store in Lagos and it was love-at-first-sight. I remember that I’d just finished a meeting and was heading back home when my curiosity led me to the store. My intention was to feed my eyes on grand pianos, see my reflection in the high gloss of piano wood, and fantasize about that time in the future when I’ll be giving a recital at Carnegie Hall to a 2,800-strong cheering crowd. Then I saw this digital piano. It was set up in a corner —and it looked beautiful. I sat at it, placed my untrained fingers on the weighted ivory keys, and it felt good. But when the store attendant told me the…
