I’ve been reflecting on how life is much like a musical composition. My love for Miles Davis is not a mystery for many, but his art has impacted my life on so many levels. If you read anything about his musicianship, often you’ll find statements about his ability to know where to place notes, and use very few notes to create beauty.
We’ve been given a few notes to play and a limited time to play them.
Every day I wake up, I’m confronted with a composition (my life) and the choice of notes to play. The notes chosen will mean everything-today and into eternity.
Funny, when I was always “busy” I played a lot of notes. A virtuoso to the world, but hollow inside. I can vividly remember thinking the notes were not mine. So why do it? Pressure to be, pressure to say, pressure to find, is all I can come up with. Time has a way of ridding you of this, if you let it. I got older and started wondering “what the hell am I doing?”
Reducing notes in order to play the true ones is not an overnight thing, and at some levels the temptations always lurk in the shadows. My current state has taken almost 10 years to get to. But I am fully alive in the process.
The following is how I approach the composition (life) and the notes I’ve been given:
- I let God inform me daily
- I review the melody of the day and play it over in my head and heart
- I look for opportunities in all facets of life.
- I don’t have expectations, I take what He gives me and I play
- I always remember, like Miles, that I only need a few notes.
Beauty follows.
