128-03-17-2009

A Song In Your Heart
Can lead to Human Kindness
By W. Owen Thornton

When it comes to the music in my heart, I hear a single pivotal moment in my head.  I hear my father criticizing me for liking the music that I liked.  At 16 or so, criticism like that can be devastating to someone.  I think somewhere along the line, I was supposed to like the music he ‘thought’ I should like.  The sad thing is I never knew what kind of music that was!

But today, as I was walking to school, with a song in my heart and literally on my lips, I thought about how much that song was making me smile.  I think anything that puts a smile on your lips, makes us better carriers for Human Kindness.  Yes, I said a ‘carrier’ for I am beginning to believe that spreading human kindness must be like spreading a healthy, beneficial disease.  Just a little bit of it and we can create a human kindness epidemic.

So I would suggest to you that if you have a song on your mind, that A: you sing it aloud, where you feel safe to do so, or that you B: hum the tune, if you don’t dare sing it.  Sing it as you walk and feel the smile building on your face, and the good feelings racing through your body.  Singing is just one of those things that makes you feel good, even when you don’t want to feel good.

So forget those critical moments where people have offered you negative comments about your singing, or the song you are singing and sing for the sheer joy of it!  (I think dancing to an inner music might even be more profound, but I don’t have a two-step in my little body!)  It doesn’t matter if you’re any good.   Singing is a feel-good thing that most people get!  When you sing and people catch you at it, they always say something like, “My, somebody’s happy today!”  And you know maybe they were right, though sometimes I was just singing because I liked to sing, and I’m not sure that I was happy at that time.  But maybe my body was, even if my mind was not.  Surely it made those people feel happy! 

Happiness places you and those around you in a position that allows everyone to better practice human kindness towards one another.  It’s like one of the ingredients required to create a human kindness epidemic.  It really doesn’t matter if your singing affects anyone other than you, because as I’ve said repeatedly on these pages before, human kindness starts with yourself first.  If you can’t feel it for yourself, you cannot give it to others.  So incubate happiness in your “self” and if that means singing then by all means sing!  A song in your heart is a pathway to happiness should you release it.  It is a signal for happiness within you and brings happiness to those around you.  And who knows what kinds of random acts of human kindness will pop up.

Perhaps with a song on your heart, in these desperate financial times, the entire world can be made better.

Cheers, my friends.

Singer Owen Thornton