“Listen to the Music”, my therapist said this to me the first day we met. He said, “the music never stops, we just stop listening”. What was he talking about? What music? And hey I am listening!
A week ago today I was talking with a friend about “My Story” and what had happened to me. This particular friendship began just as I began my therapy, my journey out of the darkness. He has seen what I was and what I have become. As we sat there talking we started discussing what had happened to me and some of the life-changing tools and concepts I had employed. As we talked I could see something in him, that he understood and wanted to know more. Something had clicked. He asked if I had written any of this down and if I could share it. I had.
Let me backtrack a bit here. Last May I was asked to speak to several groups of mental health professionals in Ireland. I was asked to talk about my journey, how I had gone from there to here. I spent a few days writing a piece I call “My Story”.
Here it is November now and new groups have formed in Ireland to discuss suicide therapy
Unknown to me that day as I sat talking with my friend, thousands of miles away 2 strangers stood in a room and read “My Story” to a room full of strangers.
When I got home after visiting my friend I sat down and opened “My Story” and read through it, tears in my eyes, my heart pushing up into my throat. I haven’t looked at this piece of writing since I wrote it and spoke it in Ireland months ago.
I think, how can I be here now when I wasn’t fully just 18 months ago?
As I sat there copying the story and about to send it to him, I received a text message from another friend asking if I had time to talk. I said “of course”
He called me a moment later and told me…. that his 12-year-old son is suicidal.
This is the music. It is always there, it is the connectedness of all things, things we see as separate but aren’t. How we believe that we are alone when we are in community. How we believe no one can understand what we are going through when they can. How we believe that our struggle is unique when it is shared by all of us. My story is your story and your story is my story.
How 2 strangers stood in a room in Ireland and read “My Story”, while I talked about “My Story” at the same time 5000 miles away and someone else was struggling with his suicidal son and reached out to me for help at that moment. This is the music.
This is the music. Its always there, it weaves it notes and binds us all together with its melodies, it never stops. But we have become deaf to it with our busy lives, our desire for more, our constant busying that drowns out the music.
So no, the music never stops, we just stop listening to it. And back to this thought, how can I be here now when I wasn’t 18 months ago. Because I now listen to the music, I can see how we are all connected, how we are all the same. So the next time you think something is a coincidence, maybe pause for a moment and listen more deeply.
Andrea Gibson beautifully says this in poetry. Please, listen.