Music Lessons

It has been several months since I started practicing with my Martin. What a joy it was to listen to the sound emitted from the guitar. I learned to play several worship songs but mostly secular ones. Encouraged by the sound of music, I took up ukulele classes too. Along the way, my niece Serena sent me a kalimba, out of the clear blue. I've never heard of a kalimba so you can imagine my amazement and puzzlement when I opened up the box to see a wooden thingamajig with strips of metal arrayed across it. If you have never heard of a kalimba, go check with Ah Goo. (Google)

Last week, I sent my guitar to Joshua to have the strings changed. Elixir strings gauge 0.11 was recommended. Joshua assessed my instrument and told me that the neck was slightly bent, and it would augur well to get it corrected as early as possible. I took his advice.

Later, an old friend of mine (Jac, not her real name) called for a tele-chat.

"So how's your guitar classes", she wanted to know.

"Ah.. I have to stop for a while. My guitar's neck is bent. It's being repaired." I said.

"Didn't that happen before?" Jac asked.

"Oh yes. My first guitar was diagnosed with a sunken neck. It was beyond repair."

"Good grief!" Jac laughed. "I wonder how you played your guitar to have two of them suffering neck injuries. What happened to your ukulele class?"

"Ah... The teacher was admitted into the hospital." 

And we laughed unabashedly, like old friends do. We forgot about the ravages of the Covid variant.  We forgot about the victims who have fallen.  We forgot about the teacher who was admitted into the hospital. We just laughed.

It felt good to occasionally laugh although we were in the midst of terrible times, somber times, grievous times, where people we know fall ill and go.

But who knows what will happen next?  Now, is that brief moment we shared laughing at a matter so painfully trivial that it outshined all the tragedy around us. 

Let us live our lives one day at a time. Forget about long term plans. Listen to the bird chirping outside your window this morning because by tomorrow, the bird may be gone, and if not the bird, then you.

Life can be so tragic that it is almost laughable.