July 24, 2024
I streamed a documentary this past
weekend entitled “I Am: Celine Dion”. Beyond a doubt this was one of the most
powerful films I have ever watched.
Years before, I found myself
asking a question—not expecting any response—but more or less a question asked
of the cosmos, wondering what the answer would be to: how would one even navigate
such a circumstance? The question arose in the aftermath of the tragedy that
befell another great singer, one who’d undergone what should have been a simple
surgery to remove nodules from her vocal cords. The result of that surgery was
the destruction of Julie Andrew’s amazing, four-octave singing voice.
Now here is another great
singer, a woman whose voice I have loved since the first time I heard it, when
she was a teenager coming into her own in the Canadian music scene. No surgery
this time, but it turns out that hers is a one to three persons in a million
disease—Stiff Person Syndrome. The spasming of muscles—all muscles can be
susceptible—that, in her case, restricts the ability of her body to produce
sound. As she said in the documentary, her lungs are working, but the muscles
surrounding her lungs restrict what happens with them.
To have been given such a
gift—a once in an infinity kind of a voice—and then to have it gone. Or if not
gone, perhaps closed off? Like a brick wall suddenly appearing and preventing a
voice from being fully reached, being fully used, being fully heard. What must
it be like to suffer such a turn, such a change, such a loss? Even on top of
the incredible physical pain that must be endured when one’s muscles suddenly spasm
and lock. (I’m sure you’ve had a charley horse. Now imagine every muscle in
legs, arms, chest having a charley horse at the same time.) Surely, it is a
loss akin to the loss of a dear friend, or companion. Surely the grief, the
bereavement must be close to unbearable.
I don’t know if I can think of
a more apt description of hell than to have been given something precious,
something that you loved beyond measure, and then to have that something so viciously
torn away.
As I pondered all these things
and as I watched that documentary, I understood how very much we as human
beings truly have in common with each other. While we are going through the
tough times, the emotions we experience, the kind of suffering that perhaps
isn’t visible to the eye of others, is something with which we can all
identify.
What happens to famous people
isn’t any different than what happens to the rest of us. We are all human
beings, and our individual stories are simply human stories. And if we
allow it—if we will it—we can use our stories to bring us together.
No, I don’t know what it’s
like to suddenly lose the ability to celebrate a God-given talent; but I do
know what it’s like to lose a God-given child.
I may not have lost an ability
that allowed me to do something I deeply loved, but I have lost a house to
fire. Two houses, in fact, in my case.
If we strip things down to
their most elemental core, we are all far more the same than we are different. I
believe that the problem we have, as people who are so much the same, in
getting along, can be traced to our perceptions.
These days, it’s a common
saying that perception is reality. And perhaps it is, in the way our emotions
interpret them. Kind of like when you look at the weather report and it tells
you, “It’s 80 but feels like 110.” The truth is, it’s 80. The perception is it
feels like 110.
I wonder if it could be useful
for us to take time, especially when we experience those emotions that unsettle
us, to ask ourselves if we can get to the point where we can look beyond the “feels
like” portion of the program.
When something is said to us
that immediately spikes an emotion—especially a negative emotion—could we take
a mental time out and ask, “Is what I heard exactly what was said?” The first
few times, I’m thinking that is an exercise we will have to do, post-moment, as
it were. It might depend on the speaker; or more probably, on our perception
of the speaker.
But if we could manage it? If
we could say to our emotions, yes, you have validity. Now, let’s take a moment
and look beyond that.
In time, the result may be
that we are able to bring down the temperature of our rhetoric. If we can learn
to look beyond the emotions of the moment, perhaps we will be able to more
clearly see how our fellow citizens truly are more like us than we have thought
them to be.
We are all human. I hope that
someday soon we can all realize that fact and get on to the more important challenges
in life.
Love,
Morgan
https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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