Music Heals the Soul

How often do you hears the phrase above, and did it ever make you wonder how true it could be?

At times of sadness and frustrations, I will just need to sing a few lines to myself and it will be just a matter of minutes before I feel slightly better – though of course that doesn’t mean the tears will stop flowing. It just makes me feel… less lonely actually.

There was this one occasion, which I finds very magical (if I erase or push away the logical analytical part of my brain). That one fine day I was feeling extremely down and upset, or you can say depressed. I’ve been crying my eyes out and at the same time, trying to drive while feeling all upset as it’s a working day. I went and had a few chats with different people on the phone, trying to make myself feel better but to no avail. And right after my last chat with a friend I made through a seminar, I was playing with my phone (horrible habit, have since stopped for… a week) while killing time in a jam. While my tears continue to stream down my face, I was trying to get into some game apps when suddenly I hear music in the background (I had my headphone on). It caught me by a total surprise as I was pretty certain that I did not press the music on my iPhone. While I was trying to figure what was going on, I realized the song that was playing was in fact, “Bridge over Trouble Waters”. Stunned somewhat, I just took it all in, and just keep replaying the song. It just felt although someone was telling me that “its okay” and I feel so much better already.

As much as music heals the soul, we must not forget about that hard-rock or heavy-metal style of music that gets people all aggressive and agitated. I always recall the time in college when I was feeling so pissed with everything as I’m under a huge pressure to get some assignments settled last minute, I ended just listening to heavy rock songs to get my adrenalin running and my anger was at its peak in fact. I was slamming my fingers on the keyboard in fury, scaring students that were passing by!

Or the other occasion when I was feeling alright, then when I started on all those sad love songs I ended up crying till I go to bed. That was actually pretty embarrassing, which makes me pretty happy to have the room all to myself at times like this.

So I guess we shouldn’t say music heals, instead music affects our emotional well-being so much more than words can do. Often words spoken can means so much, yet listening to it through music seems to much different.

For that, I thank all the great musicians out there and ultimately, I thank God for the blessing of a good pair of ears to enjoy my music.