Sitting in my Room
On an early day home, I sat next to the keyboard in my room with my sister. She said something to me that made me realise what I have been doing has actually allowed me to benefit from it. It has been something that I have never been able to accomplish before. With her hand on my shoulder, she told me: "Your shoulders are a lot more relaxed now. Looks like it has been helping you distress quite a bit."
What was it? What helped me relax my shoulders?
Well it started with my best friend, Alex, telling me to start singing lessons. After half a year of him preaching to me, I decided to go with it. I regret the fact that I didn’t listen to his advice straight away though. Throughout my three years in University, I always enjoyed singing. I was never on pitch though. I was quite the successful annoying singer you get in public. I slowly became shy with singing and would only sing once in awhile next to the friends I am close with. Alex saw that I wasn’t actually tone death and he told me that he can see that I can actually do this properly if I went to lessons.
Stress
Now that I have actually started singing lessons, I feel like it has helped me deal with a lot of stress that I was never able to actually deal with. Yes, we need time to work on our main course of activities in life, but we also need to find other activities that we can accomplish at our own pace "without" stress so that we can still feel like we accomplishing something.
But funny enough, the singing lessons didn’t only teach me about dealing with stress. This is the fascinating part.
Something else
In school, I was never able to accomplish something fully. I was always terrible at academics. Alex would always do small sprints of excessive studying and get a lot more marks than me in tests and exams. Why? I would say that his musical background did play a role in supporting his ability to perform such miracles.
Everyone is taught to study the content of the work since they were young. Yes, we know chapter 1, 2, 3, etc. in the textbook and we know what the content is all about. Somehow when we write it out on paper, it isn’t the same and the report of our efforts doesn’t reflect our inputs.
Musicians tends to have the ability to "feel". As I am learning different sectors of different songs, I am realising through evaluation of my own performance where my loop holes are. I am clear that the voicing I am producing does not match the harmony. As I practise, I come closer and closer to what is expected by feeling my own throat and the pitch of the music. Since our brain works on associations of experience in our lives, musicians learn to utilise this skill to evaluate the content of their work to the expectations and the marking process of the marker. It essentially becomes a game for them to play. Seeing how well should I write this piece of text to allow the marker to recognise my understanding of the content related to this question.
I personally came from a structured background so categorising information in my head was easy, but I was never bought up in a creative background where I can get my feelings to facilitate me in anyway. I must say, I am very glad I started learning to sing. Somehow, I feel like it is a good idea to have only started singing after high school so that I can be rooted into a structured way of thinking… Knowing my slow ability to adapt.
More
Taking this concept even further though. There is one other thing that we can use this skill on…
Our every day life. In what sense? Is my every action in harmony with God? Is my every thought aligned with Dao? Is my every movement an act of Love? Would people be an able to see compassion through my actions? Can people witness loyalty from my existence? Can I be trusted as a person? Do I represent a living body of God? Of Dao? Of Allah? Of Buddha? Of Confucius? Of Lao Zi?
If not, what am I missing?
One beauty of musicians is perfection. I want to see if I can borrow the skills from singing to see if I can reach perfection with my spiritual growth and cultivation.