It was spring and I was standing on a path in the cemetery, mesmerised by a robin perched atop a gravestone, singing his song at full throttle.
I was close enough to see his little throat dance as the sweet notes left his beak and swirled out into the wild tangle of this place.
How unapologetically he sings his song, I thought. Such confidence. Such power. I’m certain it has never crossed his mind to be insecure about his song. I’m certain he has never tried to sing more like the blackbird in some strange confusion that his song is better. I’m certain he does not chant twenty positive affirmations about his worth each morning before he sings.
He is ‘just’ a robin and he ‘just’ sings and we are all blessed by its beauty.
By contrast, so many of us sit atop our perches, too afraid to open our mouths. Too many strange ideas have entered our minds.
We want to know if there is a right way to sing. We want to know if there is a right time to sing. We want validation that our song is a ‘good’ one, that we won’t be laughed out of the cemetery. In some cases, we’ve even lost sight of the fact that we have a song at all.
If the world were a beggar, he is waiting for you to drop only one thing into his cap as you pass him on the street – your song – and as you do so it’s as if you dropped all the golden coins of the universe into his cap and he immediately ceases to beg and sits back in a state of full content, smiling, for your unique and unapologetic song was everything he longed for.
We exist in a remarkable mystery. We are both life and the experiencers of life. We are one consciousness cast into millions of beautiful songs, each and every one a gloriously unique expression of the whole. We are a playlist with no beginning and no end.
The beauty of life is that there is no right song, there is no right time to sing, and there’s no one with any authority to judge your song as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, although some may try. Your song is always perfect by very virtue of the fact that it is yours and yours alone.
The world longs for you to know this deeply in your heart and to sing.
Sing.
Sing.
Love and courage,
Leah