When I gave my life over to Christ I decided to detox and in doing so I gave up listening to music for a period of time. I often found myself just sitting, wondering how I would possibly get through some of the days. I had made the decision to give up what I really never went a day without. At first, I thought it was a horrible choice, but I learned to become more in tuned with who I am. Up until that point, I never knew exactly how much time I was devoting to listening to music and watching music videos. How much time I had wasted on not really being productive. In not listening to music, I needed to pass the time, make it count, so I resorted to writing.
I always had the desire to just write, and detoxing from music opened that door for me. Instead of putting my earphones in and spending hours listening to music, I now spend much of my time writing poetry. I love it. When I write I tend to mute out everything around me and just let my pen slip away with my thoughts.The more I write, the more my passion grows. I found my escape go to that renders a physical result as well as emotional and mental. I found myself disconnecting from the world of music as the days go by. Writing, from my perspective, serves as listening to music for me. So what I chose to do was go 24 hours without writing or listening to music. I chose to challenge myself because not every individual is dependent on the music, even a few days without it does not hinder my concentration.
In doing this exercise, I found it rather difficult, exactly like the time I decided to detox from music. Honestly, life seems so boring and meaningless in a way. I mean, whenever I am down or just feel the urge, I write and it used to be that way when I resorted to music. Almost as if it were a sacred retreat that only I could access. Going through this again, however in a different way has definitely done some good for me. You really never know just how much you are missing out on when you are devoting your time to just one thing.Even though writing poetry is my absolute passion, I seemed to have put that in the place where music used to be. I can see that now.
Everywhere we turn there is music, whether it be hip-hop, gospel, country, classical or any other genre. Escaping from the realm of music is harder than it sounds and almost near impossible.
While going through my detox from music and writing, I experienced withdrawals, sadness and just a longing to be swept away by the words of an artist or singer coming to my rescue or just picking my pen up and rescuing myself. Sort of like I was detoxing from a severe addiction and that is what I was doing. Having to experience firsthand on how a day or even a week without any music is like just makes me want to get a “quick fix” without my writing – I thought I was going to just give up. In this case, going without music is easier said than done. Going without anything that has become a part of your daily life is hard. You never know how significant it is until you decide to give it up. However, there is a valuable lesson in this exercise. We as individuals love music and other things, however, we cannot be so solely dependent upon them so much that we just completely disconnect from reality.
