Play a Song, Not Just the Notes

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer. A bird sings because it has a song.

— Maya Angelou

I attended a recent talk given by Siddhartha Mukherjee, oncologist and Pulitzer Prize winning author. In describing his forthcoming book, The Song of the Cell, he said he chose the title because it was “aspirational." He explained that cell biologists are busy researching dozens of different cell types in the body, yet they are still far from understanding how these specialized cells work together as a whole. In other words, scientists have tuned into specific notes (unique cells), but they don’t fully understand how those interact to become the song that sings the human body into existence.

In Western culture, we are extremely proficient at specialization. We go to one doctor for our foot, one for our knee and one for our hip, as though they aren’t all connected. We invest in building temporary shelters for those who are homeless, but we don’t address other factors that could alleviate homelessness for the long term. We send money to victims of the latest devastating hurricane, flood or fire, but don’t collectively take action on the upstream contributors to climate change. In short, we’re often good at playing individual notes, but we have a much harder time attuning to the whole song. We’re quick to offer answers, but not sustained solutions.

”Notes” can also take the form of the minutiae filling our days — a computer shutting down in the middle of a presentation, a sick child who needs to be picked up at school, a fraught conversation with a colleague, etc. Dealing with these while keeping our broader goals and vision may feel impossible at times.

Occasionally we may experience a kind of transcendence while in nature, in a church, temple or mosque, in an illuminating conversation or quiet meditation. Those fleeting moments can give us perspective and space to handle whatever challenges are coming our way, but we generally undervalue them relative to taking care of the tasks at hand.

The fact is notes can exist without becoming a song, but a song can only exist if the notes are played in a particular order, with a particular emphasis and with particular spacing. Otherwise we just get a cacophony. And much of our lives can feel quite dissonant until we get better at keeping not only the notes, but the melody in our heads and hearts.

What would it take to be more consciously and concurrently aware of both levels of experience — what Mukherjee called, the “atomized” and the “ultimate”? I’ve found it requires pausing, taking a moment to step back from our current focus and listen not only for the notes but the silence between the notes in order to grasp the feel and impact of the entire song. It also requires practice to move seamlessly and deliberately back and forth between our immediate and overarching viewpoints. When we can do this with more frequency, I have seen in myself as well as my clients that we make wiser, more effective decisions. Instead of just checking off our ‘to do’ list, we learn to play notes with the right spacing, emphasis and resonance to create a song that can sustain us all.

Partnering with clients to implement this particular practice is one of my great joys. And of course, doing this work together also helps me hone my own skills in this regard. Yes, “practice" is the operative word!

Are you in? Set up your free “discovery session” today!

— written and published by Elise Miller, Cedar Wise Coaching LCC, October 1, 2022