My Take Tuesday: Circulus Plenus

My parents have five children.

Five very different paths. Five very different personalities. Each one of us are highly driven and disciplined.
Our paths led in five different directions—law, veterinary medicine, music, agricultural economics, and education.
My parents believed in us long before we understood what we were capable of becoming.

While we were growing up, there was one non-negotiable in our home: piano practice.

Every single day. Thirty minutes. No exceptions.

I’ll be honest—I hated it.

There were a thousand things I would have rather been doing. Chores on the farm felt more appealing some days. Moving irrigation pipe. Digging ditch. Feeding animals. Even pulling weeds seemed like a better use of time than sitting at a piano bench, working through scales and songs that didn’t yet mean anything to me.

But my mother… she never wavered.

Patient. Steady. Unrelenting in the most loving way.

She made sure each one of us sat down and practiced. One at a time. Day after day. Year after year.

Looking back now, I don’t remember the arguments or the resistance nearly as much as I remember her consistency.

And somewhere along the way… something changed.

The very thing I resisted became something I now cherish.

I love playing the piano.

What once felt like a burden has become a refuge.

That’s the funny thing about discipline—it often disguises itself as inconvenience in the moment but reveals itself as a gift over time.

Each of my siblings took those lessons and applied them in different ways. Different careers. Different lives. But the same underlying principle: do your best. Show up. Put in the work.

And then there’s my little brother, Seth.

Admittedly, I am biased. But if you know Seth, you share my admiration and love for his unique personality and talent.

He received his Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Kansas. He is an example of professional excellence. He is a world class organist.

But his success is not the product of natural talent alone.

It is the result of thousands of hours—decades—of deliberate, focused practice.

Three decades of showing up.
Three decades of refining his craft.
Three decades of choosing discipline over convenience.

That is what excellence looks like.

Today, he teaches over 30 students in his studio, passing on not just musical knowledge, but the very principle that shaped him—hard work, done consistently over time.

A while back, my mother—who once sat beside five children, making sure we practiced every day—decided to take organ lessons.

From Seth.

Let that sink in.

A full circle moment in its purest form.

And then, last weekend something remarkable happened.

At 70 years of age, my mother sat down and played the world-famous Tabernacle organ at Temple Square.

An instrument as complex and intimidating as any in the world.

Most people wouldn’t even consider learning something new at that stage of life—let alone mastering an instrument of that magnitude.

But she did.

Because that’s who she is.

Patient. Disciplined. Willing to try. Willing to grow.

The same woman who once required us to practice… is still practicing. Still learning. Still becoming.

And in that moment, as she played, I couldn’t help but think—

This is what it was all for.

It was about becoming the kind of person who keeps showing up… no matter your age, no matter your stage of life.

Because the greatest lessons we were ever taught were never about piano keys.

They were about persistence and growth. They were about believing that it’s never too late to begin.

And that… is the kind of legacy that echoes far beyond any instrument.

And that is My Take.
N. Isaac Bott, DVM