While I'm not a music major or a professional musician, music and cello playing was the focal point of my high school career, and it has been an intricate part of my college experience as well. Yet, music didn’t become important to me at all until high school. This remains one of my biggest regrets simply because of how necessary music was to my social and emotional development throughout high school.

For one, music gave me something to strive for. I will admit that I was a good high school student, but I viewed classes during high school with a heavy sense of passiveness. I was never really challenged much in my classes, and the challenging classes that I did take I didn’t care enough about to try. I simply wanted to get an A, without any interest in the knowledge being divulged to me. This notion is explained in earlier posts of mine. However, regardless, music was the one facet of my high school career that I chose to remain an active participant in. The sense of competition within the music world was palpable to me, and one I found admirable as well. However, the majority of the competition remained within me.

My musical ignorance was very discernible upon my arrival to high-school. However, with time, I gradually came to understand the workings and intricacies of musicianship. I eventually started playing my cello in front of smaller church crowds and in front of family and friends. The thrill that came from playing was surreal to me because it was the first time in my life that the work I was putting into something seemed to have a direct impact on other people. I could put a smile on peoples faces. I could make them feel a certain way. These newly discovered abilities of mine remained humbling yet empowering as well. Because of this feedback, I wanted to push my abilities even further. This lead to me trying out for youth symphonies, something nearly unheard of in my smaller high school orchestra.

Joining ensembles meant I learned to be a team player. In normal classes, you can do poorly, yet it will have little to no impact on your peers. However, being part of a large ensemble taught me that I must push myself to be a valuable part of the team. There can be no sense of passiveness while being part of a group because being a passive player could be disastrous for the ensemble.

I admired the unity that an ensemble must have. Everyone in the ensemble is together to achieve a common goal, and this motif leads to most of my closest friends being players in the orchestras I played in. Spending countless hours with musicians to create music and speaking to them before and after rehearsal, and working together to make music meant that truly deep valued friendships were created.

I also believe musicians take in the world in a different way than non-musicians. We're much more observant of the outside world and are forced to rely on raw emotion to truly create a beautiful piece, which makes friendships between musicians even more intimate. I believe that being better in tune with one's emotion really does make a person more empathetic, as it gives one the capacity to relate to the emotions of others. And to me, empathy is one of the most valuable human characteristics one can have. Its what unites us, and is what gives us the ability to be compassionate and understanding to other people. Musicians essentially become the masters of empathy, because, on the stage, every note played has the capacity to divulge a certain emotion to your audience. Music and theater are both safe places to say something that needs to be said about life and the world, and the motifs displayed in music and theater are put in ways that are meant for people to relate to, simply because of the emotions portrayed in them.

So my one wish to non-musicians is to let your guard down. Become an active listener of music. Try to listen to music you don’t like sometimes. Simply let your mind and body react to it, regardless if you like the feeling you get from it or not. Let yourself feel emotions you’ve never felt before. Just listen and let yourself feel. Step into the songwriter's world and relate to their experiences just through emotions and be empathetic to them.