A Lesson in Music

To unwind, or maybe start my day, I like to go running. Even though I'm not in the shape I used to be (which makes me sound really old) and now I normally run the same trail everyday, it's still is something I find pretty important. Besides my new slower pace, having since quit running competitively, I now like to run with music as my companion. I feel like I barely have time to do anything anymore, so combining two preferable activities just seems efficient. My mom ended up getting a new Ipod recently, so her old 8g Nano was handed down to me. I have a 30g I keep most my music on, so instead of deleting the 1g of music she had, I just added some of my own to the mix. This came into play today when I decided to take a bold step and press the random shuffle button as I jogged out the door. Here is the result:

1.) Matt Nathanson-Bulletproof weeks
2.) Straylight Run- Mistakes We Knew We Were Making
3.) The Commitments- Saved
4.) Flobots- Rise
5.) Wynton Marsalis- The Magic hour (only a portion though, its a 13 minute song)
6.) Dancing in The Street- David Bowie
7.)Tony O'Connor- All of My Life
8.) Willy Nelson & Waylon Jennings- Mammas don't let your baby's grow up to be cowboys
9.) Spyro Gyra- Morning Dance
10.) Dua- Zanzibar Casbah

Between myself, my Dad, and my Mom, these are the gems which my Ipod exposed me to today. There is something enchanting about jumping from ballads, to gospel, to hip hop, to jazz, to honkey tonk, and a little 80's pop performed by an ambiguous collaboration. Through all the things I've seen in my short twenty-two years, one of the biggest blows I faced was when music stopped sounding good, but today, I think I can smile knowing that one love I thought I lost forever has returned. So I encourage you, if your struggling today, do something you've always loved, and let it move you like it did the first time you felt it. And if that love is music, dive into those three days of songs you have in your itunes, and let the shuffle lead you. Who knows, maybe you'll find a diamond in the rough!

The Delicate Balance in Life

This morning I was met with a great Dichotomy. Yesterday, I was met with one as well. And thinking back on my days, it seems like each is met with a blitz of awe-inspiring happiness and mind-blowing pain. The news lately has held headlines like Obama's bailout plan, peace talks between North Korea and China, new advances in stem-cell research, and the Pope trying to reach out to young believers by creating a vatican page on YouTube. But to set the scales straight, one click away were articles about the effects of phosphorus in the Israel-Gaza conflict, deadly storms in Spain killing 4 children under the age of 12, and former bishops of the Catholic church refusing to acknowledge the existence of gas chambers in the Holocaust, further bridging the gap between major world religions. Even this morning my heart was torn reading email, having received one in regards to a friends new journey in France, and another informing me of the final blow in a family friend's loosing battle with cancer. It seems like each day this paradox of rising hope and building devastation grows. I can't put my finger on whether or not I think the world is slowly crumbling from the inside, or if globalization is bandaging the wounds that ignorance created. But the one conclusion I can find seems to be the fact that this dichotomy is life. Without pain their would be no joy. Without suffering there would be no soothing. Without heartbreak there would be no love. If one moment I want to wither away in my bed, I stand up, because I know the next moment will hold something powerful enough to curb the ugliness the immobilized me in the first place. And maybe that is the lesson that needs to be learned. Even though life doesn't always appear fair, and there seems to be a war between good and evil raging around every corner, our only option is to live. We can either stay hidden in our beds, or we can wake up, make sure we put on clean underwear  and socks, and do all that is humanly possible to add another tally to the good side of the scoreboard. I don't know what the rest of the world will chose, but the bell ringing on the dryer tells me that my hope is only a warm pair of socks away.