When I was about twenty-one, I had an experience with a Bernard Fendt cello that I’ve never entirely forgotten.

At the time, my teacher was helping a middleman broker sell instruments. As I remember it, the story was that the owner’s mother had some kind of Juilliard connection. Whether that detail mattered or not, it gave the whole thing an aura of prestige. The asking price was somewhere around $150,000, though I was told the instrument could be bought for $90,000. At that age, both numbers belonged to another planet.

I went to the man’s house, an ordinary suburban house in the Detroit area. Inside, it felt like a cello and bow paradise. There were instruments everywhere, and I tried several, all of them far beyond anything I could realistically afford. Then I played the Fendt.

Under the ear, it sounded incredible. It was also beautiful. I wanted it immediately.

I had one serious reservation: the cello had only about a six-inch endpin, and I’m a tall person. Even then, that gave me pause. But I was young, impressionable, and too ready to believe that I might be standing at the threshold of a life-changing opportunity. I took the Fendt home and planned to use it for a competition and for my final exam jury.

That was a mistake.

The cello I already owned, a Paesold, was a very good instrument. It later carried me through conservatory and helped me win a few regional orchestra auditions. But at twenty-one, I was foolish enough to believe that if something sounded extraordinary under my ear and carried a more glamorous name and price tag, it must therefore be the better path.

I got attached very quickly. I asked my parents to refinance their house to help me buy the cello. I started writing to people in hopes of raising money. My teacher was very persuasive and made me feel that I needed this instrument.

Then came the university exam.

After I played, I was told that the cello didn’t project. I remember thinking, "What do you mean it doesn’t project?" I had just played unaccompanied Bach. Under my ear, it seemed to have everything. But from a distance, apparently, it didn’t carry the way I thought it did.

That was a hard lesson. A cello can sound magnificent to the player and still fail to do what it needs to do in a hall.

With no money lined up and those comments from professional musicians weighing on me, I told the middleman that I was no longer interested. At that point, he told me something I probably should have handled differently: the owner had apparently been willing to lend me the cello free of charge for my college studies.

I dropped the ball.

At least, that’s how it was presented to me afterward. And from then on, whenever I saw him, the middleman liked to remind me that I’d made the wrong decision.

That part stayed with me too, but in a different way.

Looking back, I don’t think the main lesson is that I should have bought the Fendt, or borrowed it, or acted faster, or seized the moment more boldly. I think the real lesson is that I was treating one opportunity as if it were destiny.

At twenty-one, that’s easy to do. You think a single instrument, a single teacher, a single audition, a single connection, a single yes or no will change the whole course of your life. Sometimes those moments matter. But more often, what shapes you most isn’t one grand decision. It’s the accumulation of smaller, steadier choices made over time.

That experience taught me a few things.

First, don’t treat every opportunity as a life-defining decision. Most of life is built through smaller choices, not dramatic turning points.

Second, don’t play a competition or an exam on an instrument you brought home two days earlier, especially if you already have reservations about comfort and setup. That should have been obvious to me. It wasn’t.

Third, don’t let other people keep you emotionally trapped in a decision you’ve already made. Acknowledge what happened, learn from it, and move on. Not every path you decline is a tragedy.

Fourth, when something feels rushed, don’t say no too quickly, but don’t say yes too quickly either. Often the wisest answer is simply: not yet. Give it a few more days. Give it a couple of weeks. Pressure has a way of disguising itself as urgency, and urgency has a way of making people confuse movement with wisdom.

I still remember how that Fendt sounded under the ear. I still remember how much I wanted it. But I also remember what that experience exposed in me: inexperience, insecurity, impatience, and a willingness to be swept along by other people’s certainty.

That may have been the more valuable instrument lesson in the end.