Listening to The Music in Me: How Not to Fall Back

In several conversations during the past week or so, I have been noticing a striking pattern manifesting in the lives of different people at the moment: the battle between the past, present and future. At times, the past can revisit like a gentle breeze, offering whispers of remembrance, but it can also take the shape of a rabid dog whose jaw locks firmly around one’s leg, fiercely attempting to pull one back. The intent is not necessarily to injure, but to hold on, to take away precious life energy from the present to feed itself on what it no longer possesses: you.

One day last week, I woke up suddenly with a thought of certainty that I *had* to give away or sell the keyboard I had stored in my closet at my parents’ house. I hadn’t thought about the keyboard in years. It was tucked away behind some other items and wasn’t particularly in my scope of vision even accidentally. But, my dream was clear: let go. But, I countered in my head, that keyboard meant a lot to me once. I saved up my own money as a teenager for it. I wrote songs on it. I dreamed of being a musician with it. I would sit in the dark on early mornings before anyone knew I was up and with the dawn cracking through the curtains, play songs that said things out loud to only my ears—things that could not take shape in words. It had served its purpose and yet, I had held on to it, hiding it away in case I would need it or want it again. A lot of us do that with things, people and old ideas or beliefs about ourselves or the world. “Let’s just keep that for a rainy day…” But instead of it being an umbrella to protect from some future experience one may not want or a tool to drive out the clouds of loneliness, apathy or boredom, it becomes a metaphorical way of filtering the sun all the time. And, it is exactly that kind of self-imposed distillation of light that prevents one from coming into fullness.

When talking to a friend yesterday, I had a revelation. Upon hearing my tale of the keyboard, she noted something similar, having recently given away her prized art desk to a young artist who is the daughter of someone she knows. As a teenager, my friend wanted to be an artist. Though we didn’t know each other then, I wanted to be a musician, but life had other plans for both of us. It occurred to me that my single desire to pursue music as a child initiated a series of incredible, direct and indirect synchronicities that lead me to living in Brooklyn twenty years later doing something completely different—to a place where I could find the happiness and connection that was what I truly wanted all along anyway. It wasn’t that I was supposed to be a musician—it was that having that dream got me closer to where I could come into my fullness with all of the parts of myself (some of which I am still discovering). The music in me has never stopped, but relentlessly has called to manifest through different gifts than I had the capacity to understand as a child.  All talents are simply the paths upon which we are called home to ourselves.

Since this event, I have been going through a few other things from my childhood that I kept stored away at my parents’ that I now realize I have no use for—and never will. Trying to hold on to a past in any capacity—besides being an exercise in futility—is a way of abandoning all of the work one has done to be who one has become. In my experience, it zaps life energy on multiple levels—emotionally and physically. But, instead of admonishing that rabid dog or begging it to let go of me, I’m thanking it for the days it was my pet and simply sending it on its way back to where it belongs. It is out for blood, but it can only stay as long as one allows. I’m resisting the pull to return to being someone I am not, to living a thousand half desires, to consenting to spending any moments of my days with people who want to direct my path for a benefit that is not my own. (Sometimes, those rabid dogs travel in packs.) It’s not that the past was horrible to me—parts of my past were amazing and wonderful—but it is merely that I believe with all of my "believingness" that the present and future are where the gifts unknown are.  I don’t cling to certainty as much as I once did.  I’m willing to close my eyes and hold on to the string of the balloons that are lifting me towards the horizon where dreams and love and joy and freedom originate to begin with. Whether it is about letting go of possessions or the past itself, the journey I’m witnessing right now in my life and in that of others around me is ultimately one of opportunity and of being true to the best of one’s self.