The Music and The Zoom
Sometimes the best self-care is to drive around with the music up so loud your muscles can feel it and your brain can’t think in a straight line. Amiright?! I was doing that the other day (it was just one of those days) and it occurred to me, that if something was wrong with my vehicle, I wouldn’t have been able to notice any sounds that the car was making to alert me that something wasn’t quite right. Or even very wrong.
Of course, I love thinking in metaphor, so my mind turned that immediately into a life-lesson: What about the figurative music that our head plays to numb the rest of our self and we miss what the rest of our self has to say; has to warn us about; has to alert us to?
And then it made me remember the metaphor I shared some time ago about the water skier, the one that zooms around on the surface of the water, taking in the sights of the speed (which can be lovely of course), living off the adrenaline that comes with the zooming and the speeding, but what if they let go of that rope and take in that view, the one where they stopped? What does that look like; what does that communicate; what does that offer?
What the Music and the Zoom Share
In both of those word-pictures, a theme emerges—the life skill *To NOTICE.* It’s one of great benefit. That’s not to say the loud music of distraction and the adrenaline of the speed aren’t also beneficial at times, but if we can’t (or choose not to) practice both the quiet and the stop, there are important things we will miss.
The days that followed my bilateral mastectomy were brutal – I mean B R U T A L – the grief, astounding. As those surgery recovery days turned into chemo recovery days, the way my energy was consumed and the way my time was spent looked very different than “B.C.” And I learned in that time, when I couldn’t even lift my own arms to put mascara on vanishing eyelashes, the quiet and the stopping was vitally important. And I learned (albeit forced due to the circumstances) then what to do in that space: I learned to N O T I C E. Notice what my insides were telling me. What my external space was telling me. And what I needed to then attend to and address those things.
That life skill didn’t really exist too much for me prior to those forced days of recovery. And while I’d much prefer a different way to learn of its power, I’ll leverage it all the same. So, for you today, are there internal messages you might be missing because your music is up to loud? Is there something in your body that is in physical pain? Do you feel an internal tension in your gut or maybe feel out of breath when you’re upset? Are you sensing you need to act on something you’ve been thinking about off and on for a while now? Additionally, would it benefit you to slow down to a stop and pay attention to the external messages from that view? Is someone in your life acting differently than normal? Does the change in season bring about feelings and emotions that always seem to catch you off guard? Do you sense a change in the room when a particular person enters it?
What the Music and the Zoom Mean to You
Now, I have no intentions of insinuating that if you haven’t experienced this, you’re lacking something. Rather, I want to encourage you, through offering tangible examples that you might be able to relate to, to simply notice what happens around you and in you. There is no need to “go looking for something when something isn’t there” so be mindful of that, too. Practicing this life skill will give you just what you need – it’ll either be the simple quiet and stop moments to be quiet and stopped or those moments will offer you insights you didn’t already know. Win/win.