Piano and Cello Symphony
Hey all you studious students, and restless writers! What a beautiful way to start out the week. I woke up this morning to a slick driveway, perfect for sliding across on the way to warm up my boyfriends pick up before he left for the day.
Piano
Music has a way of pulling us from our own thoughts, and into reflections. So I find something beautiful to listen too. Whether it is relaxing piano music (which is a taste I formed growing up with a piano in the house and a mother full love for the classical genre.
I grew up a happy child in a broken home where the pieces were all doing their best yet still required each others cooperation in order to come together. Often resembling a battlefield, but we still ate together, prayed together, and played together and those are the areas that count.
But, with my mother’s classical music, and later the infusion of each of my older sisters tastes I realized there was a common ingredient in the genres that stayed with me… Instrumentals, Voices tuned to the heartstrings of another human who’d felt something deeply enough to compose a song to surround and comfort it.
Laying on the kitchen floor with my eyes closed I would think of the beautiful adventures to come.
Through the noise, through the running feet pounding down the hallway, through the voices screaming out their contest to a current circumstance, the music somehow made it less difficult to breathe and more interesting to try to understand.
Once you feel music has saved you, it is impossible not to feel grateful for its company. It becomes a best friend, a close companion, and the angel sent to talk you off of a proverbial ledge, maybe even a real one.
That figure it takes the place of, has a way of turning its heroic gesture of existing and finding its way to you at the exact perfect moment into a reflection of something heroic hiding within ourselves.
If you can put down your pencil and leave the notes to your imagination, and offer a melody a moment when you feel overwhelmed and under pressure, wonderful things happen. If you’re willing to run with it, without interruption, dismissing all thoughts that seem to stand outside of the gift running through your ears, the outcome is nothing short of a powerful meditation.
A reminder to yourself that if everyone and everything around you is worth taking a moment for, then you too, deserve the same kind of care it begins with the small gestures you take. Have a sense of humor about it and think of yourself as the dearest friend you will ever make, someone you can’t wait to introduce to others, and in turn, others will always be excited to meet you.
Less Sad, More Contemplative Instrumental Electronic (rain background)
When I practice this kind of mindfulness, especially while listening to music that makes me feel more alive in the moment (I practice this throughout my daily runs, it helps reduce the discomfort when I choose to push out the last mile for all it’s worth), I find that I expect less of others. I appreciate them more.
I don’t feel like the grabby, abrasive, ‘gimme’ monster oppressing all of my relationships through passive-aggressive acts of kindness that comes with the feeling of needing more than I am receiving.
I only need more when I am not giving to myself as well as I give to others. The act of giving something to someone else can be construed as a more selfish act that giving to one’s self.
Not just materially, I’m talkin’ compliments, foot massages… exercise (even when it doesn’t sound fun) the whole nine yards, because when you give to yourself, what you give to others is more authentic, less needy, and more fulfilling.
When you moniter yourself without expecting others to do it for you, the empowerment, determination, and joy are exponensially more visible.
Every morning after my favorite companion leaves me for the day, I sit down in front of the TV and I stretch, I do whatever motion feels good. Whatever feels strained, I stretch it out and I breathe while beautiful pictures and meditative YouTube videos play over the screen, and share a moment with myself. I know it sounds too easy, but I dare you to try it when you feel there are a million other things to be done, the difficulty level is totally dependent on the intention of the doer.
Orchestral Music
I find that having classical music such as the videos shared above as a background throughout the day, is a cheat code for happiness, when my thoughts stray from their focus on ‘my daily bread’ writing, they don’t drift to worries so easily because they are busy envisioning the stories being told by the music (Be careful the opposite may hold true with more negative keyed or toned melodies).
If this sounds hippy-dippy for you and your attitude stinks about it and you are set on the failure of the experiment, give it a shot anyway. It might just pleasantly if unwittingly, surprise you ;).
I Truly wish to hear back from anyone who tries this experiment, I would love to hear about different experiences, and as a writer, what you tell me counts in my character building and world mapping, every perspective is important in my book. I look forward to your ideas.
The Inkling 