This Is Your Life on Music

True Confession:

When I lived in DC, a top priority for me was experiencing music. I even made a goal in 2009 to go to at least one concert a month (a goal that I am glad to say I completed). Music was such a vibrant part of my experience in the District. One of my only real hesitations in leaving was leaving behind The Rock and Roll Hotel, 930 and 6th & I Synagogue.

And it's a fact that I'm a music snob. (More on that later.)

In the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to re-embrace music. And, man, has it been amazing.

So, music has been on my mind, especially its value and weight in my life. I ache for those who don't find joy in music, because my life has been lit on fire by its power. Truly, music has enabled me to live passionately.

I love the way in which music connects us with each other.

Case in point, the girl that is the other part of me–my bestie (sans testie) loves music, too. We sealed our girl-crushing fate dancing in the dark in the middle of a parking lot...and in a snowy mountain driveway in the dead of winter.

But music is not just forceful in the good friendships. Music has been instrumental in keeping me connected with my more difficult relationships. Music has kept me close to my father, even in the most strenuous of times. I will never be able to say that I am not my father's daughter...because you know that music snobbery? It came from him.

I can't remember one single memory from my childhood that doesn't include a soundtrack. Cruising for yard sales in the summertime? Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Driving to Florida to go to Disney World? The Blues Brothers. Fixing the cars in the garage? Jimi Hendrix and Peter Frampton. The most bittersweet goodbye I can remember? Don Henley.

If I'm really honest with myself, I have to admit that the gratitude that I feel for music originates in a gratitude for my father. Which is a heady thing.

And so, music is a huge thing in my life. Perhaps better stated, music is how I most fully experience the joys of the world. The joys my Heavenly Parents would have me know.

I had a conversation with a friend recently wherein the influence of music was questioned–not its power, but whether or not it was a power for good. That conversation has made me think. It pierced me through because I can't imagine my life without music; I can't imagine my survival through the hard times or my joy in the good. I can't imagine stringing the highs and lows together without the soundtrack of my life. More so, I can't imagine smiling at former pains without music. I don't know if I would be so able to measure my growth without it.

I can't describe the feeling I get when I hear something that so perfectly is me in the moment in which I hear it, the gift that it is for that to happen. In short, while the lives of others may not be so reliant on music, I am here in a very real way because of its sheer positive force.

So, enough of the cheesiness. Let me share just a handful of my all-time favorites (because you got this far, and you deserve a reward for reading this less-than-awesome-or-at-least-very-divergent post)!