Music is my coping mechanism

For as long as I can remember, music has been a big part of my life. There was a time when I played music and there was a time when I actually sang in a choir. I think those experiences helped me develop a good base knowledge about music – that, and growing up the younger brother of a teenager who was big into music during those very impressionable years of mine. For that reason, 80s hair band rock is the foundation of my musical taste, but it has certainly grown since I’ve come into my own.

Since then I’ve expanded to have a VERY wide variety of musical tastes. I’ll listen to anything from Eminem, to Atlanta Rhythm Section, to Patty Griffin, to Kent DuChaine, Foreigner and Guns ‘N’ Roses.

Nowadays, more often than not I turn to music as a coping mechanism with the world around me. If something is going well, I listen to music that is upbeat and very positive. But if things are going badly, I tend to listen to slower, more emotional music that really encapsulates how I feel. The way I look at it, it’s not so much me identifying with the music as the music identifying with me. I think it helps me deal with whatever comes along to know and hear that someone else has felt the same way and gone through the same thing as me. I guess you could call it dwelling, but I’d rather think of it as dealing. It helps me get over whatever it was that got me down in the first place and it is remarkably comforting.

For instance, when I feel heartbroken, I might listen to some slow Eric Clapton or Bad Company, or maybe something altogether different. Or if I’m feeling like I could conquer the world, you might find me listening to Guns ‘N’ Roses. I’m sure you get the point.

I have recently tried to help others find their musical coping mechanisms. My mother is someone who grew up with music as a big part of her life. At one point, she was a very talented lead singer in a band and I think music was probably an emotional outlet for her, as it is with most musicians. But she has stopped listening to music for the most part. The same is essentially true for someone else I know and both have a lot of stress in their lives. I think listening to music is a natural stress reliever and both could greatly benefit from re-finding the music, so to speak.

It’s kind of funny to me, but they say smell is the sense that is most associated with memory. I won’t argue with that, but I will say that for me, sound, or certain songs play on my memories like a drum. Probably the same as with most people, I go through phases where I’ll listen to a certain song over and over again until I wear it out. Well, if I happened to be playing that certain song during a definitive period in my life, I’ll tend to associate that song with that period.

I can remember playing one particular song repeatedly every time I was headed over to see my now ex-girlfriend. Well, low and behold, I heard this particular song three years later and it took me right back to that girl. I immediately remembered exactly how I felt when I was headed to her house, exactly the mood I used to be in and exactly why I used to play it.

There was another time when a song hit me this way. When I was in middle school, I used to listen to a particular radio station every morning as I would eat my cereal while getting ready for school. Well, needless to say, I heard one of the songs that used to always play on that station and suddenly I felt as if I should be eating a bowl of Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats.

These are very vivid memories. But I digress. The point is that music is my release and I use it to relate to the world as I know it.

Oddly enough, I think cutting the grass is another natural stress reliever for me. But I’ll save that for a different column on a different day.

Be like a duck... but don't fret if it doesn't work out

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in my lifetime, it’s that things may not always work out the way you would like. In fact, it can be a rarity that things actually do work out the way you think they should, and more often than not, it takes a lot of tough behind-the-scenes work.

I recently came up with what I considered a long-term plan to reach a goal that was important to me. Through a few weeks, everything was going “according to plan,” you could say. Up until recently, when the plan basically came to a screeching halt, which, as you can probably imagine, is a bit upsetting. It would be easy for me to get down and feel sorry about it, blah, blah, but I had to look at history and simply say, things happen for a reason, and go from there. I know that throughout my lifetime, this has happened on many more than one occasion.

My parents have always told me that hard work pays off. A friend once told me to always be like a duck: cool, calm and collected on the surface, but paddle like hell underneath. I took both pieces of advice to heart and have really tried to be like the duck.

I don’t usually touch subjects like what I’m about to say, but they say the Lord works in mysterious ways, and I believe it’s true. There have been plenty of times in my life when my plan didn’t work out, only to find out later that God had a much better plan for me.

For the first 18 years of my life, I practiced every day and thought I was going to be a professional baseball player. It was my plan. I ate, slept and breathed baseball. I lived it. But as soon as I got to college, for some reason the rigors of the sport just didn’t appeal to me and I decided not to play anymore. To this day I wonder about that decision, but I’m comfortable with it.

In economics, they teach you a very important concept known as “opportunity cost.” But it’s much more than just an economic concept. The idea is that basically, everything you do costs you something, whether it’s money, time or experience. For instance, if you’re faced with a decision of watching TV or going out with friends, and you choose to go out with friends, the opportunity cost of that decision was the TV program you missed. Every decision you make has an opportunity cost or consequence.

There is so much I would have missed if I had chosen to pursue baseball. During that time, I really came into my own as a person and found out who I was. Some people find this out sooner than I did, but when you dedicate so much of your life to one thing, it begins to define you. So for me, separation from the sport helped me redefine myself. And in this case, the opportunity cost of becoming me was very small, and for that I can honestly say deciding not to play baseball anymore happened for a reason, although I didn’t see it so clearly at the time.

Regardless of what happens to you in your lifetime, you have to keep in mind that when one door closes, another one usually opens up. You may have to search for it and it may take some time to find, but as long as you keep your eyes open, things will usually work out. It’s a comforting viewpoint to have, and it’s basically the same principal as believing in a religion that cannot be proven. It’s about faith – faith that if you work hard for what you believe in and what you want, things will work out in your favor.

But as you work, keep in mind that it doesn’t matter who you are, what kind of job you have, how much money you make or what you look like, some things just aren’t meant to be. And on the flip side, if it is meant to be, then there’s no need to worry.