Undergraduate / 'I'm a control freak' - Common App Essay - "environment where you are content..." [7]

Hey guys, I'm new to essay forum, so I apologize ahead of time if anything is off about the format of my post! Anyway, I've finally finished my common app essay and I'm ready for some outside edit/revision suggestions.

Prompt: Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

Essay:

It's 2:50. I leave for swim practice in ten minutes. I guess I could play a song. Or two. Or five. Before I know it, it's 3:10. Late is an understatement. But how could I leave the piano? I am perfectly content sitting on that bench, hearing out the chords of my new favorite song and improvising my own arrangement. I am using my hands- that's athletic, right!?

That may be a stretch, but I know what's not a stretch. When I play my improvisational arrangements, I travel to a different place-metaphorically, of course. More specifically, I escape the daily stresses of school and the like. I may not compose the piano songs I play, but when I'm arranging and playing them, it feels like they're mine to a certain extent; creativity takes center stage. In those moments, I am a musician. In those moments, I am an artist. In those moments, I am definitively content.

I'll be honest-I know I'm a control freak. Both in and out of school, I find myself seeking control of my surroundings. After all, doing so benefits me in a myriad of ways. This pursuit makes me proactive, diligent, and assertive, and it ultimately leads to a sense of internal and external order. Order is a core value of mine; it motivates motivates me and puts me at peace. Searching for ultimate order, however, is a futile effort. What one cannot control far outnumbers what one can control. I struggle to attain control and order in many scenarios-except one.

Sitting on my piano bench playing my chord-based improvisations, I find a degree of control and order unmatched in any other place. I can play fast or slow, hard or soft, high or low. I can use trills or grace notes, rolling chords or octaves, triads or inversions. The opportunities are vast and complex, but the concept is simple. I have the complete authority to determine how and what I want to play, with the retrospectively minor limitation of chords. In that sense, I find something greater. I find significance. I find meaning.

Meaning, however, is not a two-dimensional concept. Meaning is complex. Meaning is even contradictory sometimes. Even though I find the control and order that I value when I play my improvisational arrangements, I seemingly find their absence as well. By its very nature, improvisation is unpredictable. Each and every time I play a song, my impulsive arrangement is unique to that day, to that hour, to that minute, to that moment. So what drives this impetuous uniqueness? Emotion. In my constant search for control and order, I find myself thinking-a lot. And thinking is tiring! Even though the countless choices I must make when arranging and improvising a piece require thought processes I myself cannot explain, I find that for those minutes and sometimes hours that I play at a time, I can stop thinking and start feeling. I let the emotions take over as my hands and the piano become a medium for whatever potent, verbally inexpressible emotion I am feeling. In truth, then, I lose my cherished control and order, even though I possess them at the same time.

At this point, the true meaning emerges. My chord-based improvisations both feed my desires for control and order and allow me to be free from them at the same time. My playing both satisfies and relieves me. The music is in my hands, but my hands are in my heart. I recognize the beneficial role control and order play in my life and identity, but I also realize their eternally elusive nature and the importance of sometimes ceasing my pursuit of them. My improvisational piano arrangements provide me with just these things. No wonder I'm late for swim practice-sometimes.