Giving Thanks to Music

This Thanking, I was blessed with the privilege of saying grace at our family gathering.

The expected speech must contain billions of "thank-you," especially to family members. All the words must be accompanied with the standard Reys smile, which includes all 32 teeth (this) is where my grandfather has to improvise and show all of his...gums). And you must swing your hips back and forth in expression of eternal appreciation and joy.

So last Thursday, I rocked the Reyes house down with my textbooks speech about how we should all be grateful that we have food to eat and such a great and loving family, using these guaranteed to woe techniques. But I felt something was missing. I felt that I had not be original.

I stopped swinging and stopped smiling and desperately thought about what I should be thankful for.

I squinted my eyes really tightly and when I finally opened them each member of my family was waiting for the grant finale--the "thank you" that would beat all others. My mother looked on proudly because she knew that her baby would come through for her.

Then I opened my mouth and said, "And finally, I am grateful for MUSIC!!!!!!"

My mother's head fell and my dad just said, "Let's eat the grub." Everyone trudged to their seat shaking their heads in disbelief.

But was the only "thank you" in the whole grace speech that I actually felt I meant.

Thanksgiving has lost a lot of its original and special meaning through the years. We are so programmed into what we should say or feel or what we should be thankful for.

It's not that family or food isn't important. It's just the fact that when these "thank-you" are uttered, they are often insincere. It is seldom that we really sit down and think about what is important and valuable in our lives. We say what others will approve of, what is written in some invisible bible on how to live life.

Music may not be the most cherished possession but it is something for which I am sincerely grateful. Music has come to symbolize the types of things that people can be grateful for. It is something, much like family and food, that we take for granted and hardly ever appreciate.

Music's important influence on our lives typically began in middle school--and, for some, even before then.

How many of our parents made us take music lessons? Many of us endured piano lessons and some were even forced to take tuba or clarinet lessons. (Now that's something most of us should be thankful for avoiding.)

For many, our love for music as a generation was catalyzed by our music lessons as impressionable youngsters. We either fell in love with tuba music and ran into the sores to buy Yanni CD's or we were dying to run the heck away from music like that, rebelling by listening to rock and roll bands, especially groups with very different ideas of how to use musical instruments.

Seeing as how we grew up with these types of music--we take these with us to college and beyond.

In college, music takes on a whole different meaning. Uninhibited by the older neighbors we may have had living with our parents, music takes it full and proper shape on the university campus.

Everywhere you walk, you hear music playing, in every dorm and even on every street corner. If you walk into any room at Harvard and you don't find a stereo, which is playing, it's a miracle.

In college, music becomes an essential aspect of our lives, one that is fearfully influential, one that follows us wherever we go.

When we come home and we retreat to our bedrooms after saying a short "hello" to the parents, we don't necessarily run into our closets and find that old tuba and play it while dad sings a nursery rhyme along with us. Instead, we usually run into our backpacks, where can find the convenient walk- man and drain our parents' complaints away with the distorted sounds of Pearl Jam.

Music has become everything for this generation.

Not only is the strong history of music valuable and under appreciated, but so is the fact that music has become more than just an escape from our parents, roommates and our homework. It has also taken on much more meaningful proportions in our memories.

All of us have a favorite song. Some of us have more than just one. There is the favorite song to hear when you want to remember home and your friends, or your first kiss, your latest kiss, your loved one or even your parents. There are also songs that help you forget your parents, your friends or your loved one.

Then three are the songs that drown out your roommate in that next room. Of course there are also the party songs with which everyone seems to unite. Songs and music in general have come to acquire special meaning in our lives.

Maybe music wasn't the best thing to be grateful for at a Thanksgiving dinner where all your respectable family members age 50 and over are gathered. Maybe I should have stuck with saying that my family and the opportunity to go to a school like Harvard meant everything to me and never gone beyond that. But I would have cheated myself out of my true feelings.

I am grateful for my family. I am grateful for the opportunity to go to Harvard. But every year we say that in such generic terms that it sounds like we don't even believe it anymore.

Saying grace and the whole belief behind Thanksgiving has become minor and insignificant in comparison to some cranberry sauce and a big bird. We have to say grace, so we say it, in the simplest form, and immediately head straight for the food.

Last Thursday, I thought that I would at least try to bring back some type of honorable Thanksgiving tradition. But it was nagged by another, more moderns, Thanks giving tradition: forgetting what is really important in life and just heading for the "grub."