This I Believe

For what may very well be my final post, I am using my This I Believe paper, which is also music oriented. Enjoy...

I Believe in Music

How many people do you know that when you asked them what kind of music they liked, they reply, “I don’t like music.”? My guess is that you haven’t known or even met anyone who would say that. Everyone likes music, some more than others, and everyone has a different taste in what they like. Music is one of the only things that almost everyone in the world has in common.

Through my music, I’ve learned so many things that you wouldn’t normally associate with music. One of the bigger personal problems that I have is that I bottle up all of my emotions, and when I was younger it would explode, sometimes violently. Ever since I first picked up the guitar, I’ve had a place that I feel is safe to let out all of my emotions, both good and bad. While playing the guitar, it would feel so good to let out all of my pent up emotions that I have been very slowly learning to be more open with people.

As lame as it sounds, my guitar has been one of my best and most loyal friends over the years. Since I started playing about 6 years ago, I’ve moved three times, one of the times was to a different country, graduated high school and been in at least a dozen different incarnations of bands. Through all that, I’ve had my guitar, and it’s never let me down.

Music can also take us to a specific time and place. A lot of couples have a specific song that they almost use as a theme, and whenever one hears it, they think of the other. Whenever I hear “Hotel California” by The Eagles, I think of my childhood when my mom would play it to put me to sleep.

There was one time that I have seriously considered giving up the guitar completely. Things like “this is a waste of time” and “you’ll never be that good” were ringing through my head. I was feeling beat because I felt like I wasn’t getting any better, and even if I did, what would it be for? A few days into my contemplations of giving up the guitar, I came across a very old recording on our computer from when I was 14. It was a recording of all the songs that I loved to play when I was 14. I decided to take a listen just out of curiosity. It was awful. I didn’t even finish listening to the whole thing. After that, I felt amazing. I could easily hear how much I had improved. I learned that even though sometimes things feel pointless and you feel like you aren’t getting any better, a lot of the time you are getting better. I also learned something on the other side of the spectrum. When I was fourteen, I really thought that I was “the cat’s pajamas” when it came to the guitar, when in reality, I wasn’t really that awesome. For a fourteen year old, I was decent, but definitely not a child prodigy.

I’ve learned so much through music, and I still feel like I still have so much more to learn from it. To quote Victor Hugo: “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”