Living Happiness ...

It's a Tuesday morning and the sky is gray and cloudy. The sun looks like it might come out to play, but I hope it doesn't. I would be very happy if it stayed in today as I am wont to do. I have gathered myself and my tea and cozied up in my corner room. The door is closed, the candles will be lit, and the winds of inspiration will play over me like an aeolean lyre. This is what I am hoping.

I sat at these very windows the other day and watched the trees being whipped around in manic fashion. There was no delicacy in the playing the wind was doing that day: I heard, instead, a full-blown orchestra – trumpets blasting, tympani rolling, and the frenetic strains of viola.

When I was young I played the flute. For many years, actually. I began at the age of nine and played regularly and competitively until my early twenties. The how and the why of my not continuing this passion are of and for another time, but play I did, in regiments, concerts, symphonies and orchestras.

Music has rests. Did you know that? For any given instrument in an orchestra, there are times during the flow of the composition where rests are demanded. Instrument is down. Counting is begun. We listen to the work of the players around us and await our turn to chime in again, to contribute our part to the overall harmony and melody of the piece. Rarely, if ever, do all instruments play all of a composition from start to finish. This isn't where the music lies.

Even melody itself has rests, its own built-in syncopations that rely on the breaking up of beats instead of one monotonous cadence. Some notes get more attention than others, some get less, and there are mini-breaks between the two, as well: short, audible pauses that yield the rhythm and melody that make our tune something catchy, breezy, melancholic, or gloriously beautiful.

So, if this is true in music, might it not also be true in our own lives? We frequently insist on picking up our instrument every day and playing at full volume until the cows come home (or until we do … whichever happens first). But why do we believe that the music will stop simply because we have?

What if, instead, we did stop … for a day or two … and listened to the music of the life around us. What are its movements? Its leitmotifs? Its themes?

And what if we paid attention to the other players in the symphony that is our own?

One of my favorite sounds in the world is the sound of an orchestra tuning up: the hum of the violin, the pipe of the flute, the drone of the cello, and the sigh of the french horn. I feel in my bones that something exciting is about to happen, that beauty awaits. I know I am about to be transported.


Peace be with you today.