The Music Prism - Sadness, Life and Being Happy

I’ve written, some time ago, on how music was an important door for enhancing the opportunities of communication with our autistic son. Music is actually a two-way chance door, with pros and cons moving in both directions, like any other connection in close relationships. Sometimes our older son is deeply connected with music, his curious eyes getting closer to whoever is singing, or to the instrument that is producing those amazing sounds. Sometimes he is distracted and disruptive, and his loud expression breaks any attempt to create a coherent or harmonic music structure, into sheer chaos.

This state of things unfolds from our music interactions to all other aspects of life. Sometimes dinner is peaceful and full of opportunities for learning new words, new foods, new sounds and new interactions. Sometimes it’s difficult. Sometimes when we visit friends, the interaction is almost musical. Sometimes it can become incredibly dissonant.

And by living this way, our family has fewer friends than other families. But what we lose in quantity, we gain in quality, as a central requirement for friends that want us to be their friends, is that they are as loving as we are, as able as we are to cope with changes, as compassionate as we have learned to be, and as tolerant and patient as we have joyfully become.

More than often, however, we bump into misunderstandings, which usually degenerate onto a situation where people are initially intolerant. Luckily enough, in most cases, when opportunity is given for talking about the way we live, what we expect from life, and what life allows us to expect from it, intolerance turns into acts of embracing, recognition, and those few but great friendships are born. Other times, we become unable to reciprocate some more demanding types of expectations. In such cases, intolerance breaks down further into lack of compassion towards us, and the blob of prejudice leads to a situation where there is not much we can do. In such cases, our family as a whole mimics our older son’s disability, as it becomes impossible to communicate who we are or what we feel to those who do not want to understand. Such occasions, which thankfully have become less and less frequent, still make us very sad.

Interesting it is to see how sadness pushes us into those states of deep reflection. Also interesting is the fact that I have, recently, found again in music a deep, wide channel where the long-keeled boat of reflection can make its slow, large maneuvers. This is a consequence of my recent opportunity to take up playing the classical guitar, for rehearsing in a duo project centered in Brazilian popular music. Since I was a youngster, I have found the acoustic guitar was the perfect vessel for my most reflective moments. And I was, since such early days, surprised to see how music, made from my playing the guitar, acted as a prism to clearly separate what I was feeling.

The prism of music allows me to distill my frustration during those moments where my family is misunderstood, or is seen by the eyes of prejudice, as I mentioned above, and gives me a chance to understand that my sadness in such situations comes from realizing how desolate those people can be in their own inner worlds, and hidden lives. On the other hand, the reflective music prism can distill my own sadness, even the strongest ones, so that I can see them from the larger perspective of life, and the many chances for happiness life provides. One such chance is having in my family a disabled son, who gives us the opportunity of fully exercising our love, of recongnizing our failures, and, in the end, of becoming better persons each day.