This life doesn't come with a rewind button.

I’m the kind of person that will restart a song because I wasn’t appreciating it enough.

Music is meditation for me……….I’m listening to all of it.

Isolating each instrument and its rhythm. Appreciating how each musician plays a different part, and how every one of those parts is needed to make the song beautiful. Appreciating how when one musician flubs everyone else keeps going and carries them through.

Feeling the highs and lows. The best songs have an arc, an emotional arc. A good song can make you feel happy, sad, hopeful, hopeless, in love, full of rage and hate, amped up, or mellow and calm. And, it can make you feel it all in the matter of a few minutes. It’s all transitory - coming and going, flowing together, all necessary to make it beautiful.

Taking in the story. A story that only the person who wrote the song knows. The rest of us can try to guess at what the meaning is. Or we can make up our own story about what’s going on. But in the end, everything we think we know about the story is only our own imagination, and not necessarily what’s true.

I love how music draws me into the moment in this way. How a song beckons me to pay attention, to tune into to the details, to be present. And when I realize I missed something, I’ll start it over.

It’s like an auditory representation of life.

Music might imitate life, but in life there’s no rewind button.

I want my life to be like a song. I want to pay attention, tune into the details. Be present.

I want to notice how all of the different pieces come together and make something beautiful. How we’re all coming together to compose a masterpiece. How we all have our roles to play to keep the rhythm of life flowing.

I want to feel all of the feelings and remember that they don’t define me, and that this life wouldn’t be the same without every one of them.

I want to keep seeing through my own stories. Keep remembering that what I think the story is isn’t necessarily the truth.

I want to stay in the meditative flow of the song of my life.

So every time I realize I’m lost in my mind, sucked into social media, or otherwise getting too focused on things that don’t really matter, I remind myself that I’m missing the song. Because, life doesn’t have a rewind button!

Don’t miss a beat.