Music through the Years

I sang for the first time in a really long time at a place besides church the other day. I was put last minute into a fundraiser and had about 3 days to prepare something, so obviously I grabbed a song from Les Miserable that I sang for my senior high school choir recital.

I hadn't really thought of or sung this song in about 8 years and when I started singing it, I kinda felt this flood of emotions. (Now I know people consistently tease me about being really emotional, but this was a genuine wave of emotion.) I was amazed at how the words of this song had changed for me. Traditionally, it's the song in the play about unrequited love and heartache. As a high schooler, I thought it held hope and optimism in it too and those were the emotions I would channel when singing it.

However 8 years later, with a bit more life experience and having actually had a broken heart, I realized that this song was just about heartbreak. And the words hit a very true, very real place in my heart. And it was if my heart broke all over again as the words reminded me of painful situations and as I sang I relieved moments in my life over again.

Now that sounds a bit dramatic, but my point to this whole thing is that we are constantly changing. And the music that inspires and encourages us one moment, might no longer encourage and inspire the next. That as we consistently change with every experience, those experiences consistently change how we view the world. That every moment life changes a little for us. Things take on new meaning, things lose old meanings. Things that once matter a lot, matter little after time. You gain new perspective and hope and despair as you grow and change and evolve.

The songs that once brought you hope can be the exact songs that break your heart all over again.

And this is good and wonderful and human.

I hope that music keeps continuing to change for me. Cause that means I am continuing to grow and experience and evolve and change. It means I'm wonderfully human and living my life.

I wonder what the song will mean for me in 8 more years?

Muscle Memory

I use to take dance. Like forever ago. I used to tap, do jazz squares, and pirouette with the best of them. Then I stopped. A couple days ago I was playing with some kids and we started goofing off and doing old ballet stuff. At first it took a lot of effort to do moves that once had not required much thought or work at all. But then it was amazing to me how fast my body remembered how to correctly do some of the moves. Motions that I hadn't done in almost ten years seemed to come easier and easier the more I tried. And then I remembered muscle memory. That sometimes, when you do something over and over and over again for long enough, that even when you stop the movements are stored in your muscles and can be reawakened quite easily. Its like they lie dormant within the ligaments until one day you try to move that way again and the memory of them wakes up and comes back to life to help you turn and twist and plie. Sometimes it takes a few tries, but your muscles remember, not matter how vague.

And its not just with leg or arms muscles. Our heart muscles do this. Sometimes things happen. Bad things, hurtful things and our reactions to these things are to stop loving. To stop feeling. To stop trusting. To give up hope. To quit believing. And after awhile we don't really remember what it feels like to trust, to love, to hope. We've simply stopped using those muscles within us. They become weak. Feelings and emotions and things like trust become distant memories of something we used to know how to do effortlessly.

But the memory of those good things- the memory of love, joy, peace, trust, faith, hope- these remain imprinted on our hearts. They remain in our muscle memory. They are ours to reclaim if we only realize that they still are alive within us.

Sure, its not going to be easy to remember how to do these things again. The first few tries are going to take effort and might hurt a little, but after a while, these will become effortless again. Love will naturally start to flow from your heart without you having to make yourself feel loving towards someone. Trust will happen, whether you intentionally think on it or not. You will find yourself feeling hope without having to push yourself to find it. It will be hard at first, but then the muscle memory will kick in and in time it will be easier.

There are memories and things that live within each of us that have gone dormant. We need to re-awaken these. We need to use these muscles, these memories. We need to live fully within ourselves.

What do you need to remember?