I have decided, within myself, to try and love as much of life as possible. To overcome the mental boundary of trying new things and learn to find the beauty in both unconventional and conventional things alike.
I came to this conclusion while attending a classical music performance at Liberty. Classical music is not exactly the most riveting activity to try when it comes to branching out. For many, this music only surfaces childhood memories of parentally forced clarinet lessons or mental images of high school marching bands stumbling about. For most of my life, classical music didn’t move me to think about much of anything. It was simply something unknown to me. As a historically unmusical person with possible tone deafness, I hadn’t participated in anything under the musical arts umbrella ever. I stuck to my Spotify playlists that repeated endlessly and didn’t question someone when they said they hated classical music. I would shrug and nod my head, assuming that type of music to be simply outdated and bad.
Needless to say, getting invited to attend a night of orchestra by my bassoon playing friend was not at the top of the list of things I wanted to be doing on a Tuesday night. I sat back in my seat and crossed my arms, fully believing that the next hour and a half would be spent in a bored, sleepy trance. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy for the first ten minutes of the show until I reexamined my attitude. I realized that I had shut myself down to an experience just because I had preconceived notions from the opinion of others. In a way, I had placed blinders over my eyes and plugs in my ears. So, I told myself to give it a chance, to listen to it as if I’d never heard a thing about it before.
And the more I engaged, the more I learned and the more I loved. I noticed things I could never have seen before like the way the flutist pursed his lips and furrowed his brow, swaying his body as the music intensified. And how the violinist’s chin jutted out to rest on her instrument, keeping it steady as her bow danced along the strings. I felt my ears explode as the music built to a crescendo and the conductor waved his hands passionately. It was mesmerizing. I felt I had uncovered a secret that had been hidden away and disguised as something boring. Because to me, this wasn’t boring at all. It was a group of students working together to weave a tapestry of notes and rhythms, each with a different talent, but the same goal. To create music with their breath and their hands and an instrument. I was simply amazed.
I thoroughly enjoyed the performance and after leaving, I listened to their set list again. I hadn’t just endured a night of classical music, I exposed myself to a potential new passion. And that it became. I listen to orchestra a lot now and attend performances whenever I can find the time. I’ve embraced the hour and a half of complete emersion into stripped back, no autotune symphony. It’s just a bunch of people sitting and listening, no phones or talking. No distraction. And in my eyes and ears, it’s pure, like nature or a newborn baby. I’ve learned to love it.
Trying new things is not just the initial action of experiencing something you haven’t, it’s also the mental effort of setting aside an idea you thought to be true and giving yourself free reign to form your own opinion. There are so many tiny pockets of the world that are unique and amazing in their own way but just hidden. Not because they want to be but because they’re concealed behind layers of assumption and refusal of people to expand past their own experiences for something new. In this way, they are not permitting anything different, trapping themselves in their own status quo. It’s a horribly small existence on a flat surface with absolutely no pockets at all.
Why shut ourselves off from things that we have never seen, never experienced and never known. Who cares if you’ve never had an athletic bone in your body and are largely uncoordinated. Or, on the flip side, if you always thought of musical theatre as weird and uncool. Why not open up a door that was once closed to you. Especially at college, the opportunities expand in front of us like many forks in the road, all splitting off towards unknown places. It is now when we can experience the most and opportunity abounds.
Why not then, remove the blinders from our eyes and find the beauty in every new thing, keeping our minds wide open to both music and sport, to winter and summer, and to pizza and salad and everything in between.