I don’t know about you, but music is emotion therapy for me.

I updated my music library recently, transferring a bunch of old CD’s to digital format so I can listen to them on my smart phone. It has been fun because these songs have memories tied to them. And many of them tie into my emotions and experiences too.

Looking through my updated music list is a bit like opening up my own personal box of emotions. It’s sort of like pandora’s box, but instead of a divine law prohibiting me from opening it, here, the only thing that has kept me from opening it earlier or more often is my own mistaken sense of self-control, machoism, or some such insecurity.

Or maybe it’s more distraction and busyness that have kept me away.

Regardless, music reminds me that when I muster the courage to let those emotions out, they are rarely as scary as I feared. In the context of music, the emotional current is not chaos. The emotions are as melody to the careful guidance of rhythm. There are rules in the world, boundaries to reality; and of course, my own intellect, offering the support and order that my emotions need to be majestic and beautiful and not just wild and dangerous. In music, emotions submit to an underlying orderliness, passion plus pattern; the effect is that emotional discord gives way to beautiful resolutions, heartening revelations, and truthful insights. The penetrating glimpses made possible with good music are not strictly into the soul of the musician, they are just as penetrating for the audience. I’m not seeing the artist so much as I’m seeing Art; I’m not seeing that human, I’m seeing humanity. And that means me too.