Our 21st-century world is full of opportunities for competition—to develop personal competence and excellence in order to win while someone else loses. Technology enables us to transcend boundaries like distance, culture, and language. We can know about things that were once inaccessible, react instantaneously to things that happen on the other side of the world, and have a powerful effect—for better or worse—before we’ve even had time to think clearly or feel fully.
It is much harder to find opportunities for cooperation—to work together to create something bigger than any one of us can be alone.
“ Singing and blending together is really the best.”
It takes practice to recognize and respect boundaries—both our own and those of others. We receive sadly little training in containing powerful emotions, processing them, and then acting on them wisely rather than quickly.
“If I’m about to say something really bad, I keep it
in my head. Practice makes everything easier.”
Both sets of strengths are part of being human, and of surviving as a very large, diverse human family living on a physical planet. And singing—especially singing together in groups—is a way to develop them all. Singing is something we can each all work on doing well and through which we can work together to be more powerful than any one of us on our own. Songs provide access to distant cultures and languages; learning unfamiliar music and singing styles helps make us aware of who we are, of who we are not—in ways prompted by curiosity and excitement, rather than fear and disaffection. Singing can be a way of expressing anything—of experiencing, mastering, and then processing any emotion.
“Music can help you be happy when you are sad.”
It takes effort and craft – both of which mitigate against impulsive lashing out. Singing together can be a way of sharing across separateness, of creating a whole community out of a collection of isolated parts. People have always sung, knowing, at some level, that singing can make magic. We need that magic now, more than ever!
