Today could turn out to be a very good day for you. When you’ve been teaching this for a while it gets tough to come up with new metaphors and analogies to describe the very simple central truth that everyones seeking–the one that will bring them peace. But every now and then one of us stumbles into a new way of saying the oldest thing ever and this is one of those days.
It’s nice to see vinyl records making a comeback. I still remember walking into Mr. Sound and buying the entire Beatles collection of albums at once. I was a huge audiophile, reading Absolute Sound, buying handmade amplifiers by serial number because they were made by true genius electronics pioneers. They’re like the times you live in: they impact what your song sounds like in surprisingly dramatic ways.
I ran things like Linn Sondek turntables with an Infinity Widow arm holding a Grado Signature III. And at the end of that incredibly expensive cartridge was a tiny diamond. That diamond represents you. You’re so sure the way you are can’t be right. You must need to change. But maybe you’re just not relaxing into your own groove.
There are an infinite number of turntables. Our turntable is our world and its laws etc, and its spinning is time. The groove is your life–the people you meet, the experiences you have, your language, your schooling, where you live, how you were raised etc. Those things define the borders of your beliefs–the edges of the groove. And you bumping up against those things is what creates the music of your life.
The problem comes from your knowledge of other turntables, other records, other sounds. Your ego does this thing called comparison and you get the idea that your song can be wrong. The song can’t be wrong okay? No sounds are wrong. Just because your sound doesn’t mix well with someone else’s song doesn’t make yours or their songs wrong. They just don’t harmonize.
The people playing hip hop will be friends, but that doesn’t mean that the people playing opera aren’t valid. There are people playing nature sounds and others playing documentaries. All are valid. The only problems come for us as individuals comes when we want out of our own groove and so we add resistance to our lives. We constantly lean against our groove in our attempt to force ourselves onto a different record, as though that was possible, when all it really does is make our own song sound unbalanced.
It is not the needle’s job to question the groove. The needle does not need to concern itself with what was previously played from the recording nor does it need to worry about or create expectations around the song further down the groove. Maybe the composer of the universe threw a weird bridge into the song. Just be in the moment you’re in and bounce through it naturally as you and it will all sound perfect. Perfectly you. That’s all we were ever looking for. Because that is the music of you.
As I often write, we all change numerous times in our lifetime. Don’t worry if you’re currently experiencing the bounces of a broken-hearted ballad. Time will ensure that a new song will arrive to you naturally. There is nothing you need to fix or do. Simply live and life will uncoil. Never fear. No matter which path you take, you’re always in your groove.
peace, s
Scott McPherson is a writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and nonprofit organizations around the world.
I help people achieve better mental health by teaching them about reality.
