I’m on a musical roll. Music is a means for me to explain who I am. Last month, a former colleague of mine gave me gift, A Music Lover’s Diary. Now, I need to be honest with you about two items. The first is that music fascinates me…it speaks my language. Regardless of the genre, I love music. It is playing in the background while I am teaching online, writing, or working on raising money for laptops for students in Taunggyi, Myanmar where my granddaughters attend school. I need music to settle me down from all the pressures, etc. However, the flip side of this love for music is that I have absolutely no musical ability…none. I can’t sing on key or play any musical instrument.

The interesting thing is that my friend’s gift of the diary has organized me into writing about my musical adventures. My first foray into getting my musical writing organized was from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. “Without music, life would be a mistake…I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.” I found this one-liner in the diary. Nietzsche believed that music provided a reason for living. I agree. At least from my Weltanschauung, it can order my life. I am right-brained, which means that I’m into the arts and creativity, but I often lack the organization that I need to function in any orderly fashion. Nietzsche essentially said the same thing, “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.” Music allows me to soar emotionally.

There is a long list of both classical and contemporary music that I rely upon in my life. Rod Stewart’s Forever Young, Beethoven Pathétique, Procol Harum, A Whiter Shade of Pale, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at An Exhibition, Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, and Schuman’s Träumerei to mention a few.

However, this essay deals with another song that inspires and defines who I wish to be. What a Feeling is the theme song from Flashdance. I wrote to my friend about that song, which I have added to my diary.

I realize that this song wasn’t written for me, but as I watch the video of the song, it brings back memories of growing up in Pittsburgh. While in graduate school, I worked in a steel mill like Alex.

To be a welder or a dancer that is the question.

However, Alex wanted to leave the mill and become a dancer.

The welder becomes a dancer.

While Alex’s journey of realizing her dream moved from various places in the Pittsburgh area, I recognized the streets, bridges, and all the other scenes all of which were fond memories of my days living in the suburbs and going to graduate school in Pittsburgh. Nonetheless, the song, What a Feeling, defines what drives me to accomplish what I think is important in my twilight years. I get the feeling of the lyrics. I can randomly pick any part of the song and feel it. Believe me? Here are ten lines that I just copied and pasted to this essay.

What a feeling to have a dream drifting around in the back of my head emerge into present. In reality, nearly any of the verses expresses what haunts me about my destiny.

“Bein's believin'” explains me. The issue is in believing. If one doesn’t believe in something, that something won’t become real. I danced with death twice. I get that my clock is ticking. I don’t know how much time I have…a day, a decade, or more. Regardless, whatever I have left will be used to the fullest. I have things to do like teach, help my family in Myanmar, care for Ginger, etc. I can’t waste my precious time, which continues to tick, tick, tick.

“Now I'm dancing for my life.” The dancing is my legacy. When I finally do my last dance, how will I be remembered? I have a lot of stuff, which my family will divide up…trinkets that will cause them to remember me. However, what I do for my family here and overseas emotionally is far more important than those things. What will I have done for them to help them as they journey down the yellow brick road of life…a journey without me? Man, that drives me. There will be a time that I won’t have more time. That is not the time to wish that I had done something or expressed my feelings to them.

“Take your passion” and flesh it out. For example, I want to get 1250 laptops for the classmates with whom my three granddaughters attend school in Myanmar. That is a burning issue. Each of us must decide what is important to us. That drive is essential. Without it, we will be wasting time vegetating but not truly living. The more expansive that our family become the better for them and for us.

Finally, “make it happen.” Think about the people who will remain after you are gone. I have a family…a large and loving family. If you did a DNA test on my family, more than half aren’t linked to my DNA…but they are family. Twenty years from now, I might be still around, but I would be 96. Chances are that I will have already done my final dance.

We will all die someday. That is not the issue. The issue is how you will be remembered by your family and the world. How will they be richer due to your shared time with them?

My former colleague sent me a postcard yesterday with this one-liner by Hans Christian Andersen, “Where words fail, music speaks.”

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