I’ve always loved listening to music, like REALLY loved listening to music.
I fondly remember getting my first Fisher Price radio at age 6 and how obsessed I quickly became with learning all the radio stations and different genres of music. The soft rock stations taught me all the incredible ‘70’s ballads that I can still sing every word to, the R&B station introduced me to the exciting and still fairly new at the time world of hip hop, and of course, the pop stations taught me the legendary, iconic, irreplaceable ‘80’s songs that we all know and love.
I also remember being gifted a tape recorder from my grandparents a couple years later (what a technological dream come true that was at the time!) and learning how to strategically place it by the radio with my finger on the record button while waiting and praying that a good song would come on so I could record it. Sometimes I joke that it was really me who came up with the idea for iTunes because I vividly remember desperately wishing there was some magical way that you could listen to whatever song you wanted, whenever you wanted to! My daughter's generation will never know the struggle!
Ever since those days of my youth I’ve been looking to music to express what my own feelings and words just can’t quite say. Music has the wondrous ability to speak from and to our souls in a way that can often far surpass stated words.
I am the type of person who listens intently to the lyrics of songs and then contemplates how they relate to me personally. I find deep meaning, contentment, and healing in connecting with the stories that songs tell.
As I’ve discussed in previous posts, losing a year of my life to illness took its toll on my emotional health, and one of the tools that was a massive help to me in working through all of that was spending lots of time listening to lots of music. Music was never so important to me as when I was recovering and newly recovered from my monster ulcerative colitis flare. It helped me process what was happening, mourn what I had lost, and gave me encouragement to keep going.
In the early years after being sick, once my health and strength had returned, I started going for runs several times a week, always with a fresh playlist of songs blasting through my earbuds. The exhilaration of moving my body that had been so weakened by disease and was now strong again, coupled with the emotional process of listening to meaningful song after song combined to form a therapeutic force.
As a Type-A personality, having a regular practice of sitting and meditating while just “doing nothing” is typically very challenging for me. However, the physical and mental actions of running while listening to music successfully puts me in a meditative state where I can let the lyrics speak to me, contemplate life, and process through things - all while getting some good exercise at the same time!
In these moments, the louder the music, the more it quiets my mind.
Running while listening to music can also be a spiritual experience for me, and it certainly doesn’t need to be a spiritual/gospel song - I’ve had Katy Perry and OneRepublic preach to me more over the years than a song I’d hear in a church. God is everywhere, if we can only just keep our eyes (and ears open)...
These music-filled runs were, and continue to be a valued tool in my healing toolbox. It seems I always come home from them a little more healed, a little stronger, and a little more at peace.
For all these reasons and more, I am extremely grateful for music!
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