The principle of choosing between the tangible and intangible

The principle of choosing between the tangible and intangible is a rule for facing an impasse: when a choice must be made between something with form and something without it, choose the formless. The piano tuner presents it not as abstract advice but as a lesson shaped by his own life, where abandoning solid expectations opened a way back to himself.

The Rule and Its Use

The rule emerges in a conversation with a woman who admits that she is scared, at times so frightened she cannot think. The piano tuner says he is in no position to hand down advice, but offers a principle he follows whenever he does not know what to do. When she asks whether he made it up himself, he confirms that it comes from his own experience, glancing at the odometer of the Peugeot as he answers.

He states the rule in practical terms: whenever he runs into a wall, he chooses the option without form, and although the choice can be difficult at the time, it has always worked out. The woman repeats the principle back to him, trying it out in her own words. Yet its usefulness does not mean it is immediately clear how to apply. She says she could not tell, if forced to choose in that moment, which option had form and which did not. He allows for that uncertainty, suggesting only that she will face such a choice somewhere down the line.

The Piano Career He Gave Up

The principle becomes legible through the piano tuner’s account of his own decisions. His sister remembers believing he would become a famous concert pianist. He tells her that the music world is where child prodigies go to die, and recalls that giving up a professional-pianist career felt like a major disappointment, as though everything he had done until then had been wasted. At his lowest point, he wanted to disappear.

His choice did not mean abandoning music. He discovered in college that his ear was superior to his hands: although many people were more talented than he was, nobody had a better ear. He came to understand that becoming a first-class piano tuner suited him better than becoming a second-rate pianist. The distinction changes the apparent meaning of giving up. He did not reject music; he relinquished the fixed ambition that had made music a test of his ability and a way to impress other people.

Practice, Pleasure, and Relief

After changing his major to piano tuning, he began to enjoy playing the piano. In childhood he had practiced relentlessly and could see himself improving, but had never enjoyed the act of playing. His attention had been fixed on solving problems—avoiding fingering mistakes and keeping his fingers from getting tangled—so that he could impress others. Once he stopped trying to become a pianist, playing no longer had to serve that demand. He could recognize both the pleasure of playing and the wonder of music.

He describes the change as the lifting of a weight he had not realized he was carrying until it was gone. This is the rule’s clearest consequence: a seemingly solid goal can become a burden when it is mistaken for the only meaningful form of a life. Letting it go did not leave him with nothing; it made room for a different relation to the same music, now grounded in enjoyment rather than performance.

Authenticity and the Real Self

The piano tuner links his career change to realizing that he is gay. He says that issues he had never understood became resolved, and that life grew easier, as though clouds had parted and he could finally see. Giving up the pianist’s future and coming out as a homosexual may have upset many people, but he regards both steps as necessary to getting back to who he really is—the real him.

His sister says he should have made more effort to explain what was on his mind before taking those steps, acknowledging that she should have tried harder to understand him. The exchange leaves the principle with a relational dimension: choosing the less tangible path may restore inner clarity, but other people can experience the change without having been brought into its reasoning. The rule offers the woman a way to think about choices she cannot yet distinguish; the tuner’s history supplies its grounds without pretending that every difficult choice is easy to recognize in advance.