I’m handling my heart with kid gloves this season. I’m typically a newshound, but for the past month or so, I’m choosing my news carefully. TV news is completely off the table for now, and I’m being selective with print news, too. This won’t go on forever, but for right now, my heart is too raw, too tender to take on the pain and hurt of the entire world. I’m giving myself a break.
Last weekend I sat in the very last row of a darkened auditorium, weeping at the sound of a finale to a holiday concert. The conductor’s arms were outstretched, cueing a combined orchestra, wind ensemble, and chorus, performing an arrangement of traditional Christmas carols. It was so beautiful that it made me tremble.
I’m not sure why I was weeping, but it felt kind of good to let the tears roll silently.
I want to think that they were tears of joy; but that wasn’t it, exactly. I was feeling sorrow and joy, a strange soup of emotions swirling in my head and heart. My feelings of powerlessness are similar to a tiny drop of water trying to squelch out a massive fire. But amidst the smoke and ashes, the tragic beauty of that one sparkling drop of water shines even brighter.
While I’m turning my back on the strife and injustice of the world, I’m turning my attention to live performances, the antidote to the ugliness.
Whether it’s an expensive seat in a concert hall for a world-class symphony or a collection of middle school kids performing in a musty school auditorium, the effect is the same. Getting out of my solitary silo and sharing a fleeting moment of something beautiful is what is going to keep my heart intact. So I’m going to seek it out to soothe my soul.
I hope you do the same. Make a conscientious choice to attend a live performance, where humans are breathing the same air and seeing the same thing happen at the same moment. Not recorded, edited, mixed, and auto-tuned, but happening now. See a concert. A play. A stand-up comedian.
You might hear a wrong note. An actor might falter over a forgotten line, a joke might bomb. But for goodness sake, be part of something. Be in the audience where you are giving energy from your heart that leaps to the stage and affects the performers. Experience the give-and-take between performers and a live audience. Laugh until your eyes water. Applaud until your hands hurt.
Focus, if you will, on humans who are kind and loving and accepting; they are all around, and they live to create and give of themselves so that others might receive it.
Notice it. Then embrace it.
What I’m looking for is a little balance. If I watch the 24-hour news cycle, I will start to believe that humans are going off the path. But they’re not…not really. There is art and dance and poetry and music, and it has always been here, waiting to wrap us in its loving arms and shield us from the storm. Long-gone authors and poets and philosophers have written words that still resonate today; at the same time, new contemporary voices are rounding out the chorus. Artists are the ones who take hurt and uncertainty, rearrange the parts, and create the building blocks for something beautiful. Like a tree falling in the forest, art doesn’t make a sound until someone hears it. It doesn’t change a perspective until someone sees it. If you are an artist, now is the time to create something for others. And even if we are an audience of one, it is our job to see the beauty created by others — really see it — and accept it for the gift it truly is.
