Maybe Music is What We are Seeking
​COVID-19 has made us reassess priorities and seek truly meaningful activities. Some of us have discovered that playing music can be very meaningful for our kids, our senior parents, ourselves, and our community. We’ve long known that, if our children play music, they have greater brain growth, language and math skills, memory, attention span, concentration, mechanical coordination, discipline, responsibility, self-esteem, and social skills. We’ve also seen that, when our elderly parents play music, they have better reaction time and memory, reduced dementia, stress, blood pressure and heart rate. They have more and better social connections. People aged 20 to 50 are discovering that, like our kids and parents, we desperately need the benefits that playing music delivers.
Juggling changed work situations with needs of children who are out of school, and concerns about aging parents, we desperately need to reduce stress, improve mood, lower blood pressure, focus better, and connect with others. Playing music by ourselves satisfies the first four of these needs; playing music with others builds connections. Playing music at home strengthens connections in our families. In small, socially distanced gatherings, it does the same in our community.
The pandemic highlights the importance of activities like playing music and, because it shut down so many things, it has opened space in our lives to take up endeavors that didn’t seem possible before. Maybe playing music is what we’re seeking.