It is so difficult to remain in the moment. Our lives are so full of distractions that any thoughts which contain any continuity are being constantly derailed, making it more difficult to return to the original moment of clarity. This is the current meaning of the term “mentally disturbed,” and we are all mentally disturbed for a good part of our lives. Thrown off balance, mentally buffeted and battered. Society forces this upon us, and the resulting effect is to make us and people in general “crazy.” All of us. We all may look okay on the outside but our interiors need help. And “shrinks” of all types help us only minimally because they, like the rest of us, are mentally challenged for the same reasons and maybe even more so than the average person because of their proximity to the problem. So if our compasses are not pointed north at the same time, this is obviously causing some great and fundamental problems.
Negotiations of all kinds are potentially uneven because the parties are pointed in different directions making it difficult to arrive at sensible agreements. Families suffer when parents are at different mental levels and children begin to bounce up and down and back and forth mentally, making communication and education difficult, if not impossible, because the communication vectors are rarely connecting. One wonders at times who the role models are. Are they the parents or the children? And even this changes as age becomes a factor and we grow together or apart.
The workplace is another example of uneven communication and lack of polarity. Some degree of polarity is necessary for a company to run smoothly when most of the time it is flawed, interrupting what should be common goals. Employees and administration alike are affected by too much caffeine, problems at home, hormones, lack of sleep, etc. Schools are prime examples of mental disparity. Students and teachers alike have the same problems staying on, and in, the same subject matter. All are carrying around loads of baggage, and it is this baggage that interferes with the mental freedom that should let us all sift through information in a particular subject and retain what is useful or even valuable.
So how do we cope with this problem of a common mental balance? What gives us a helping hand with which to stay even and moving forward with purpose and stability? Religion? Sometimes…! It could be very effective if it were concise and stable and ubiquitous. But there are too many permutations that cause even more distractions and mental confusion. This might be one of the causes of the drop-out factor in most church-goers in all of our different faiths. So, again, what is the most helpful factor in reigning us in from being crazy as a society?
In a word…Music! Music tends to straighten out our bent and broken vectors and can reset our polarity. Music helps us to think, and think straight ahead with a common rhythm. This being the case, music may be the only salvation not only of our society, but of our civilization. And, best of all, there are styles, melodies, harmonies and rhythms to fit almost everyone. But we must listen! And we must re-start the musical training and listening in our schools so that as each student grows, the benefits of music listening grow with them so that when they become teens and then adults all are increasingly less mentally disturbed and able to think creatively and analytically and actually move our society and our civilization forward.
So let us all listen to music. Really listen to the content whether vocal or instrumental. Listen for our mental health! And survive…!