Good Vibrations
When I was younger I took guitar lessons. I got to be pretty good. I had mastered most of the chords major and minor and could do some pretty intricate fingering. I started in to learn classical guitar methods where I could play complete songs using each string individually. It was pretty hard but I loved it.
I would come home from school and sit down on the couch and just strum and listen to the music while my soul found peace from the day of being out and around people. By nature I’m a bit solitary.
The act of playing an instrument and hearing the sound it produced became a type of meditation for me. I sorted through many an adolescent quandary sitting on that couch, picking through a tune, or just playing with the guitar at random, seeing what melodies I could induce.
With a guitar, the music is made by the vibration of the strings echoing through the hollow sound box of the guitar. The string’s sound is amplified and reverberated back with a deeper, mellower sound than it would if it were just the strings alone.
It is critical that the sound box of the guitar not be marred in any way so that the tone of the sound is pure, round and whole. If the inside is marred, it distorts the sound; the greater the marring, the greater the musical distortion.
The music of our lives is like the music of a guitar. The things that happen to us in life are like the strings pounding out a chord. The vibration of those events resonates deep inside us. What is amplified back out is either beautiful music, or a discordant noise.
What makes the difference? Just like the guitar, it’s the wholeness of the inner chamber. If you’re not happy with the music of your life, look first at the wholeness of the inner chamber. Many times the best way to change your life is to change what’s inside and how it echoes back.
