After a few years, my playing not only sounded more interesting, but it was also more personally satisfying. After a few more years, I realized I had surpassed the point I had reached as a teenager, that I had developed greater maturity of expression and even greater technical ability than I had previously known. I know from listening to others of you in recital that I am no exception. I hear evidence over and over that you, too, have experienced the same phenomenon. Even if the capacity for such development in adult students is recognized, often the value of it is not.
Adulthood is often a time when the pace of learning slows, due in part to diminished opportunity.
Often, formal educations have ended or are focused narrowly on career objectives. We are kept busy with career and family responsibilities that utilize skills and knowledge at which we have become expert. Certainly, new learning occurs, but it is usually occupational or domestic in nature. Sometimes that is not enough. Perhaps at this point an adult thinks about taking up study of an instrument that once brought satisfaction, or perhaps even decides to plunge anew into the study of music.