Songs Get You Like No Other
I had a student that had immediately drawn me to wonder why he would be besides himself many times in class. I scheduled a time to speak with his mom. She stated that he had been this way since 1st grade. As she continued, I found my thoughts stuck at the mention of “first grade”. When she had finished accounts of his erratic behavior since then, I managed to follow with the question, “Was there anything that happened that you could remember that might have affected him in first grade?” After some thought, her answer: “He saw his dad being taken away from our home when he was in first grade.” Not only did my eyes open up about this student, but so did my heart. Years of this behavior most likely exhibited in his previous and current classes at school since then and I wondered how alone and lost this student had been all that time, looking for a way out of his own evident inner struggles.
I saw this student under a different light after that conversation. I was determined to find some remedy to this child’s inability to remain calm and seated in the classroom. Not mentioning what I’d learned, I simply asked the student what, if anything, would help to put him in peace. When he told me “peaceful music” helped him to calm down, I was relieved. This was something I knew I had some power of control to help him with at least in my classroom. Although it was implicit that no headphones could be used in my class, I made an arrangement for this child to use earphones (at that time there were no wireless earbuds) just as long as he would be discrete about it. Just like that, I never had a problem with getting him to sit down. I saw a student who could hardly sit down for a long period of time without impulsively getting up during classroom instruction or engagement transform into a peacefully self-controlled individual.
Even if other students noticed his earphones, I could feel we were all in support of this change we saw in this student as it created a much calmer dynamic in that class altogether. There was this shared compassion for this one student in the room. Never spoken. Just felt and seen. That exhalation to see this student find his peace- inexplicably rewarding and astounding to be a part of its entire transformation.
I recall being in my silent joy, my heart filled with so much warmth and grateful understanding as I later watched this student from the side at our next musical assembly. As the band and orchestra played, I was quietly mesmerized by how this student sat attentively to those playing, his eyes fixated on the instruments as he sat peacefully still. My heart knew. I could see music was indeed his peace. Arriving to such discovery was beyond words of elation for me.
I saw this student many years later, happy to hear him call out my name as he was driving by and stopped to politely say “hello”. It didn’t matter that he never knew what I learned about his life long ago. I could see in his eyes and through his smile that he had worked through the madness of his first grade memory. Healing took place within him. Music was the friend, offering him healing so his soul could live.
I understand. Music is the soul’s greatest friend. Songs have long helped me to find the inner self that needed to be at each moment an emotion was trying to speak to me, introducing each feeling to me as I encountered life’s perfect pitches and curve balls, one after another.
Music is what helped to raise me, looking after me when no one else could comprehend what I was feeling or going through inside. Even in my youngest years, one home after another, I found best comfort dancing and singing alone in my room when my older siblings weren’t around to various music that helped me to silently discover the becoming of me, my soul alive and well with the beats that reverberated within the walls.
“Free Fallin” by Tom Petty got me through high school just by listening to the chorus line. Scheduled to speak at two separate ceremonies, my academy and senior graduation, and yet having no knowledge of how I would make it into college because of everyone perhaps assuming I knew. I was just going with the flow. Little did any of my fellow peers know around me, if I were to attend and finish college, I would be the first in my family.
Since then I have had roller coaster rides of various emotions, choosing one song after another to connect with my soul, one milestone at a time.
When I hit the gym and it’s grind time, the soft music is replaced with anything between Snoop Dog saying, “You gotta get yours, I gotta get mine” to “Turn Down for What?!” to bring out that fighting spirit in me, ready to break through walls. However, when the storm was trying to take the house down along with the abundant blessings and I just needed to sweat out the toxins trying to enter me without trying to throw anger and fury in, “Unsteady” by X Ambassadors got me through those times. When my husband and I discovered Halsey, we have since danced around the room to her song, “Without Me”, as we laughed through our healing of confusion and unexpected hits that had tried, but failed to take us down.
Still, to never leave my heart and soul is Julio Iglesias, my first time hearing Besa me Mucho, the only record my frugal Papa bought, me recalling his big smile as he looked at me with so much excitement before taking out that record to play it for the first time in our home at that time. Even Papa, a frugal man, spent money for his soul to dance. Since then, Andrea Bocelli has filled that void singing his own angelic rendition along with all his countless songs that never fail to reach my own soul the way only Senor Bocelli can. Sarah McLachlan came out playing loudly with my children in the car because she reached me during times of raising teenage children while Keshia Cole practically blew out the speakers once my children stepped out of the car and I found myself alone with my own feelings of “some kind of way”.
Spiritually, no other has been able to reach my soul the way Lauren Daigle takes me through its depths with Rescue and Everything.
Music heals. I know because it healed one before my eyes. I know because it has healed me throughout the years, one melody at a time. Thank you, great friend. You have yet to forsake my soul.
