During a yoga class a few days ago, the instructor says “I remember when I was six and I was sitting on my bed listening to this song.” I cannot remember exactly what song she was talking about but I do remember first hearing that song when I was in my upper 20s.
Ugh.
In that very moment, I was reminded of just how many times I have already been around the sun…and another trip will come to completion in just a couple months.
This kind of an idea can be a real downer, although I am certain she didn’t mean it in that way. She was just in a sincere moment of remembering inside of her own life.
We all have those songs that take us back to a time and place in our lives. If you are a patient of mine at Cafe of LIFE Chiropractic here in Fenton, you have heard some “different”, “interesting” and maybe “unusual” music during your visits.
This has 2 primary reasons: FIRST, if it was music that you know and have heard before, probably I have too, and you would have a singing chiropractor all day long. And though I have been told that my voice is reasonable (and of course my fiance says I have a “voice of an angel”), nobody is interested in hearing me sing all day long, and especially my team. And SECOND, a song in your life can be a trigger for something amazing while that very same song can trigger the next person back into some of the worst moments in their lives. I have deliberately chosen music that is unfamiliar except inside of this healing space (or its quite possible you have heard some songs inside of the local yoga studios or meditation centers, other places for healing).
That was a complete tangent on music and is not the message I am really wanting to write about today.
What I want to talk about is, in that moment when the young yoga instructor was sharing her initial memories of a song at age 6 and mine was upper 20 something, my internal dialogue went to “Oh to be 25 again…” and “Wow I am old!!”
I hear you little internal critical voice. You do really work against me most of the time don’t you?
In the very same moment I was inside of an intense and powerful yoga pose, with my strong arms and legs, my “relatively” peaceful mind, after a busy day serving people going on 15 years in practice, inside the 4 walls of my incredibly beautiful office, in a time that I am closing in on marrying the man of my dreams and planning for a beautiful life, in this body that has taken me incredible places and climbed one of the highest peaks in the world, gotten my doctorate degree, lived all over the country, and…and…and.
In that very same moment, that sweet little comment from the yoga instructor took me down into a valley of how old I am getting AND then the work that I have done in gratitude and appreciation for my life and what I have done in such a short amount of time, took me to the highest of highs. It was a beautiful roller coaster and one that I felt like I was watching from an outsider’s perspective, but I was living it.
I didn’t even know I could have an opinion about music until I was 9 years old and my older brother got two cassette tapes: Michael Jackson “Thriller” and Prince “Purple Rain”. It is the first music in my life that I remember I would consciously choose to listen to myself. Everything before that was just Cars 108 on the radio in my mom and dad’s cars.
It is funny how life works and it is sometimes frightening how fast life goes. I have a clear memory when I was 6 years old, in first grade and I had some neighbors that were in fifth and sixth grades. I remember thinking “WOW!!! Those girls are old and it will be fun to be in fifth or sixth grade and not in first.”
So here we are, I am not 6 anymore, not 16, 26 or 36 anymore. The years tick by and the sweetness of the memories carry through the accomplishments of life and all the juice that is squeezed out of each and every day. I am so grateful for that sweet, little w”when I was 6″ comment she made that day as it makes me also really appreciate not being 6 anymore and that I have had such a full life already. Do you have a music memory? Whats your very first favorite song? Music really matters…to me anyway.
