On Gratitude & Being Human

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I’ve been trying to decide if I should make a podcast episode about gratitude this November. I am a firm believer in gratitude, for sure. And even have a daily practice of gratitude. I use a journal most mornings called the Five-minute Journal, and I answer a prompt about three things I’m grateful for along with three things that would make a great day and there’s space to write affirmations. And it’s a great way to start my day. Sometimes I write big profound things. Sometimes I can just think of being grateful for the coffee I happen to be drinking or the purring cat sitting in my lap.

And I’ve done this practice for years. I have to admit over the last couple of years, with all that we’ve been going through, I have some mixed feelings and some ups and downs and myself with gratitude.

I feel deeply grateful for so much in really profound ways. Lately some days I feel even more grateful on a deep level than I ever have before. There are things I hope I will never take for granted again, like being with family for big life events or holidays, like making music in the same room with other people like leaving the house to do ordinary things.

I also have days where I don’t want to have to be grateful

where I want things to be changing faster than they’re changing,

where I see problems and injustices around me that I used to be blind to and now I can’t unsee

where I feel a bit burnt around the edges and I can’t dig in deep like I used to, to just get on with it because I’ve dug as deep as I can go.

Some days I have to admit I’m human and need to rest.

I have to say no.

In a world where parents and caregivers and teachers and musicians have been taught to give and give, it seems like a horrible failure to admit being human sometimes, even to ourselves.

At least for me.

I used to think of this time of year – here in the U S it’s about to be Thanksgiving. I used to think of it as a time to just be thankful and look on the bright side and count my blessings.

I still think it’s a really great thing to do. I do it every day that I possibly can, and I don’t plan to stop that practice.

But now I think I want it to also be a time of year to be more real.

If I don’t feel particularly grateful on a given day, I don’t have to come up with something profound or trick myself into feeling cheerful.

We’ve all been through a lot the last few years. And if on some days we need to be and feel a whole lot of other things besides grateful. I hope we can be there for each other to do just that.

Sometimes we don’t need a pep talk. We just need to feel where we are and what we actually feel at this moment.

Something I’ve seen in the past couple of years, at least in many spaces I am in is more permission to be human and pets show up on zoom screens. People don’t feel good and actually cancel work or lessons. We have more permission to call hard things, actually hard things. I hope that also means we have more permission to feel joy and celebrate with one another too.

Any time there’s happy news going on right now I am thrilled.

As people who learn and study and teach and appreciate music, doesn’t always affect us most when an artist shares themselves through their music and makes us feel something?

It may be joy or deep sorrow, but feeling deeply through music is such a moving experience. I know that’s true for me and I can’t help, but think that having music in our lives is a wonderful way to feel things deeply, the joy and the hard things.

And it’s a great way to have a place to be with each other as we’re going through things. So that’s what I’m grateful for at this moment, myself.

I’m wishing you listening the space to feel grateful, or mournful, or exhausted, or joyful, whatever it is you’re feeling, maybe all of it all at once. May the music we make and listen to and create, help us feel all of it too. And help us connect with one another and be human together. Thanks for being here in this podcast community. For sure, I’m grateful for you.

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I want in to finish our time today, sharing with you the thoughts of some of my friends and colleagues about why they’re grateful for music in their lives.

I’d like to share two answers to this question from our online community.

First, from Lydia, she’s grateful for “family. So not blood family.” She says, “but family, as in beautiful people, children, parents, grandparents, colleague, and so on who I get to work with daily, “she says.

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Audra writes: “As a parent of a teen musician, I am grateful. She has music as an outlet for her emotions that are often so difficult to navigate in adolescence. Beautiful music is a great equalizer for teenage angst.“

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“Hi, my name’s Emma Pease-Byron. I’m a flute teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I’m grateful for the connection that I got in music lessons, teaching my students over the last year and a half. There were lots of days when we didn’t see anybody except for my lovely students on the, in the little box on the screen.”

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“I am so grateful for the many experiences I’ve had as a musician, whether it’s playing solo Bach and really exploring the different tone colors I can make on my violin or playing chamber music with friends where we are really immersed in the music.

And it’s this special language where we lose ourselves in the sound and the joy of playing with each other. So that’s probably my, my favorite part about music is the creative part. When I can teach a child to really listen to the sound they’re making, and then we could make music together. It’s just such a rich part of life.”

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What I hear everyone saying, from just these few examples, is how much music gives us as people and how much it connects us with others.

We’ll be back next week with interviews and conversations about practice. And I hope that this week’s episode gives us some food for thought, some ideas about gratitude, and permission to be human. My name’s Christine Goodner and this is episode 20 of the Time to Practice Podcast.