The greatest gift in life is the ability to feel.
Patrick Stewart, portraying Henry, a renowned pianist who found uncertainty in his ability to continue to play, spoke those words to Katie Holmes, Helen, in the movie, Coda.
Lines spoken in a movie or a reading have a way to connect with you at journeyed depths. The difference is hearing someone say the words aloud rather than just reciting the words to yourself.
It’s like the teacher or parent that tells you something you already know, but needed to hear to be reminded.
You can ignore the writings or the text, but when spoken, like music being distinctly played, your ears were made to connectively have cognitive desires to process meaning of the noise. When the noise has words, the message is deciphered into comprehension.
While life is like a piano, playing at finest articulation at times, in some cases, the keys become you, and simply, the tune plays at the must of you being the essential pieces to just letting be.
You are the Steinway keys, tuned to perfection, played before a quieted room with listening ears, breathing quietly to hear a concerto of notes put together to ease the hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits of all who dressed to attend.
If we simply could just mechanically live life, moments of ups and downs, highs and lows, without the need to conduct or orchestrate, either thrill or disappointments would leave us feeling faultless.
And yet, in addition to hearing, seeing, smelling, and tasting, we are gifted with the ability to feel.
I gathered that pianist, Henry, in Coda, was referring to the emotional aspect of feeling, not just the tactile things of life.
Whether we suggest life is going smoothly or going through rather rough times, there is empathy alluded and implicated within each expression.
We understand a smooth slope suggests no bumps in physical actuality just as we easily comprehend a rough road with quite several potholes or perhaps, cobblestones, in more antiquated parts of the world.
When we feel the smoothness or roughness of life, we suggest so much deeper, so much more than to just a touch.
We extract the feeling of smoothness or toughness, connecting with those who have traveled their own journeys to understand the colorful variance of each.
From one prime fiery color of red to the deepest coldness of arctic blue; to that point where we arrive to understand that what mistakenly was thought as coldest when blue is one that actually burned hotter than any layers of red.
Our own journeys simply allow us the gift in life to feel to the polarities of emotions between that which is smooth to those that are painstakingly rough.
To just go through something takes understanding that when walking out, we are either changed, impacted, or affected minimally or extremely, depending on what each individual took in, how much, and in what way.
In reading the book on Einstein, by Walter Isaacson, it is not a book I can just rush. Others may have read through the book at great speed, taking in information as matter of fact. I, on the other hand, have found myself writing on pages as if it was a textbook I was assigned to read and study for an exam.
In trying to understand the life of someone lately so intriguing to me, I find myself required to take information in pieces, carefully analyzing not just the “Einstein” he was known for, but his thought processes and how he arrived to such incremental thinking.
How can I not feel?
I have yet to finalize my last painting to which I last happily made colorful start of meaning to the serpent that had evolved from within my ask of what the canvas wanted to become.
My husband has walked in to see me just sitting on my chair, staring at a canvas, wherein, as if I was reading his mind, tell him that the painting is at “its ugly phase” whenever I feel it is rightfully and truthfully so.
As I have always felt my paintings to look back at me, each one I work on at a time awaits my touch, one given moment at a time.
How can I not feel?
While my first patent pending is at its brink to finalization, I must fight through the arduous process of making amendments respectfully and rightfully suggested by a patent examiner of my second one.
I try and be absent-minded of my invested emotions to each patent, practicing patience within each stage of development. The application process must adhere to requirements, leading me to follow suit, even if sometimes it feels steps forward take me two steps back.
How can I not feel?
As first semester was coming to a close, finalization of grading took to familiar demand along with last mercy completions and asks of students to make one last improvement.
Although not fully required, general comments were entered to help provide praise and encouragement for the second half of the year to end strong.
How can I not feel?
Atop all things, while managing quality time with my husband at any given chance we must make for ourselves, our youngest two children, undoubtedly needing us most, take unquestionable precedence over all other demands or wishful splendor.
There are times I wish to not feel a bit of guilt to ignore their need of my service to love and nurture. Those times leave me feeling the most of guilt for such thoughts.
How can I not feel?
I noted Einstein to benefit from being a patent officer not only because he was able to work on his own thinking in between, but gather thoughts from other entries passing his way.
His profound ability to tune out even his own child’s cry to keenly focus on his own thoughts is yet a skill I hope to master.
As a teacher, mother, and wife, I have hardly any thinking left to call my own by the end of each day.
It is only when the still of the morning before anyone wakes or a drive alone where I get to think freely and undisturbed.
A question asked or a comment I am all of a sudden facing to process before addressing, can be overpowering, leaving my own thoughts to have to surrender once more.
Solitude and pure solace can be the secret desire. At the same time, you feel the need of others. To answer to those feelings around are just what must be done. And, what must be done has nothing to do with your own feelings.
Perhaps it is hence where feelings for others lead one to mechanically serve.
I become the keys to the piano playing to the tune of life.
While to feel is one of our five known senses, to have emotion, while subjectively qualitative, objectively cannot be uniformly quantifiable. Your joy of 5 may be one’s joy of 10. Similarly, your sadness of 10 may be someone else’s sadness of 5.
One empathetically believing or understanding you are sincerely happy is just as indefinite as if to know you are truly sad.
That which to feel involving emotion is subject to the individual. Still, it is indeed a gift.
Whether you get to be the pianist or the keys, it is the tune of the music that silences a room for all to stop and listen.
Either way, you take essential part to the concert.
Within the crevice of each stroke, I understand what silences a room when keys are played to exquisite sound and harmony.
Like fire amidst each individual within the room, you created healing for all souls around.
You want to just be the instrumental keys that when played, creates the harmony. And yet, every stroke is at your apprehension to create perfection.
It is not how many pieces of music will be perfectly played that suggests worry. It is that one time where when out of tune or at the slip of a finger, one catches a hesitation or flaw. There, at that moment, even pianists understand and know, tension to arise.
How can I not feel?
