Covid Quarantine - Week 3: A Letter To My Patients

(During this time of self-quarantine, I have been sending weekly emails to my patients as both an encouragement to them and a way for me to gather some thoughts as we go through this together. Here is a window into that correspondence. )

Hi all-- yes, this is all insane. It's not just you :) Here's my short reflection: (first posted April 5, 2020)

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“Without music, life would be a mistake.” — Nietzsche

Geniuses, whether they be philosophers or poets, scientists or painters tend to first and foremost be listeners. Whether they are coming at it from their cognitions, their affects or their instincts, they seem to have a natural capacity to gather an inordinate amount of data and synthesize it into something meaningful. E = MC2 is a prime example. Genius. Beautiful. Simple. Profound. True. I suppose that when what is meaningful facilitates access to a deeper realm of reality we call it wisdom.

And wisdom is something that grounds us in the deeper waters of living. Were we to plant ourselves near those deeper waters and let them nourish us, perhaps we would not be so tossed to and fro by the winds of (inevitable) change. Of course, if you are like me, you know this—or at least intuit it. But then there are those made-to-order sugary click bates on my phone, or those  commercials which promise a “better” me if I just consume this or that… and I’m off! La-la-la not listening… I uproot myself from the banks of these deeper waters, and I follow the insanity… la-la-la not listening. And then I am surprised that I feel insane.

Thankfully, wisdom goes nowhere. Wisdom stays. Wisdom always welcomes us back. We get rerooted. And feel better.

Freddy (Nietzche—that’s what his Mom called him) has helped me return to this place this week. He writes, “without music, life would be a mistake.” Right!?! Genius. Beautiful. Simple. Profound. He listened to the world, and imagined a world without music! He concluded: life would be a mistake. That’s his version of E=MC2. True.

I honestly don’t know where I’d be without music catching me, finding me, mirroring me, calling me forth, encouraging me to keep on keeping on, and most importantly— getting me off the couch and inviting me to dance, to move, to live. Has music ever done that for you? Most emphatically, “music” doesn’t have to be songs, symphonies, or ballads. The scientist Johannes Kepler (1619) (Johnny… his Mom, right) discovered physical harmonies in the motion of the planets. He called it “the Music of the Spheres.” What the what!?! He listened and heard the deep musicality of the universe— that which holds this whole thing together. If we become silent enough, we might hear it too.  

Dare we plant ourselves in wisdom and listen to the deeper rhythms which are alive in the universe? Maybe it’s actual recorded music, or music you play, or the great music of the spheres. Perhaps as the rain falls on us as it is predicted to do all week, we can hear its music: its beauty, its melancholy, its cleansing, its promise that by its power, it is watering the earth so that whatever was planted long ago can finally grow and come into being.

May it be so.  
--I look forward to hearing what you have been listening to this week. Courage, and keep washing those hands.

Deborah