Life is musical

As a teenager, one of my favorite things in the world was to play music with my friends. Not only play, but really understand how the pieces fit together. I spent countless hours practicing guitar riffs, writing or transcribing music on my computer using Guitar Pro, and talking about it on MySongBook.com.

Once I became a college student, it became harder and harder for me to find the time to play music alone, let alone with my friends. I spent a long time pulling all-nighters, focusing on my career, and seeing the downfall of Fender and rock music as a mainstream genre.?

Two years ago, my wife bought me a trumpet – she knew I used to be really into Ska music back in the day. Since then, I was reunited with a part of myself that was dormant and forgotten for a long time. And now, more than ever, I realize that life is musical.

Rhythm

Rhythm is the arrangement of sounds and silences in time. The word derives from the Greek ?υθμ??, rhythmos, generally meaning "any regular recurring motion, symmetry" or "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions".

Life follows a certain rhythm and a certain tempo. To everything there is a season:

A time to build up, a time to break down

A time to dance, a time to mourn

A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

The Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn!

There are definitely periods when you might be working long hours, juggling a full-time job and a newborn child. That's the time to build up, and sometimes it can feel like it will never end. But there are other moments. Before celebrating the hardest year of my life, I was definitely at my time to mourn.

And now at 35 I can say I'm at my time for peace: happy at my job, making enough money for my ambition, searching for other ways to define myself besides what I do at work. It's a great privilege, but also the result of years of reaping so I could sow.

It's kind of like I just finished playing Flight of the Bumblebee and decided to switch over to Jamming. Still upbeat, still with a constant pace, but much more relaxed. I founded my own carnival block with a friend, and joined another one that's been around for years – probably as their worst trumpet player.

I am working on getting a disciplined sleep and exercise routine that will keep healthy enough to live and explore the world for many more years to come. And honestly… Just doing nothing at all, once in a while.

We don't need to climb the corporate ladder and hustle all the time. In rhythm, rests are just as important as beats. Sound is as important as silence. Recharging, rebuilding, living and learning in your own tempo. Sometimes adagio, sometimes presto, but always allegro ??

Melody

Melodies are linear successions of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. That's usually what most people recognize as "music" – something you might whistle or that makes a song recognizable, even if it is remixed in the style of Bluegrass.

In a band or orchestra, every pitched instrument is playing their own melody. Musicians playing the same instrument will play with slightly different dynamics, pitch, articulation… And even the same instrument, played by the same musician, will sound different at different points in time.

"There's a melody in everything. And once you find the melody, then you connect immediately with the heart. Because sometimes English or Spanish, Swahili or any language gets in the way. But nothing penetrates the heart faster than the melody." – Carlos Santana

In the same way, every person's life path is their own. When I hear my friends tell me that they wish they could live someone else's life, or that the company they work for would tell them what comes next in their career... I feel depressed. Why would you switch or outsource the only thing in life you can control – your own life choices, based on your own unique set of conditions? No company, no person, can ever fully understand who you are and fulfill everything your are waiting for in life. So don't hold your breath.

Truth is that, no matter how much we practice, my bandmates and I will not (in all likelihood) play our instruments in exactly the same way. It also might be easy for a saxophone to hit that triple G sound, but it will take years before I can even dream of doing the same with my trumpet. And if I take a trumpet break – just like when you go through a rough period in your life – it will take some time and effort to get back on track and build up my embouchure all over again.

That's part of the fun of playing together… Growing together, embracing the never-ending journey in improving your tone and skills, and realizing the subtle differences in sound that merge together as one.

Harmony

Harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined or composed into whole units or compositions. The word derives from the Greek ?ρμον?α harmonia, meaning "joint, agreement, concord".

Life is harmonic when the different pieces fit together and this gives deeper meaning to everything. Sometimes people try to compartmentalize their existence as if their "work" and "personal" lives were completely separated. While this idea has made its way into our collective unconscious, that's the kind of thing someone with post traumatic stress disorder would do to dissociate from reality.

I know I am one person, with 24 hours to live everyday and a finite number of days to live. When Tim Urban laid it out in his awesome articles Your Life in Weeks and The Tail End, it was crystal-clear to me that I could not afford to spend any of those days doing anything that wasn't at least marginally meaningful to me.

This sentence captures the essence of it all: "despite not being at the end of my life, I may very well be nearing the end of my time with some of the most important people in my life."

So that's what I mean by harmony in life. Understanding and making sure that all elements that will lead you to look back, at the very end, and realize that your did enjoy it the best you could.

I've written my own charter to put into words what harmony means to me:

• I am curious and eager to learn.
• I speak up and listen for collective growth.
• I strive for integrity and balance in life.
• I cultivate and celebrate my relationships.
• I show gratitude by paying it forward.
• I dream big and enjoy the ride.

If I look back and realized that I was this person I described in my charter every day of my life, I can say for sure that all the pieces fit together. That's my grand finale: being happy, healthy and proud of the life I'm leading, enabling meaningful shared experiences with my family and friends.