Looking with exasperation at my watch, I grumbled at the indolent creep of the minute hand. "This was scheduled to be over five minutes ago," I lamented looking to my cohorts for validation, "will it ever end?" All around me ecstatic fans were oblivious to my distress, jiving to grooves I stoutly remained disassociated from. I should have been enjoying myself, yet the band at the Fillmore Auditorium appeared no where close to surrendering the stage, and I couldn't wait to leave. But that was out of the question. I was on the clock and still had another forty-five minutes of drudgery remaining once the music stopped.
Five years I was employed at various concert venues in Denver, seeing on average two shows per week. That's over 500 concerts - many forgettable, others simply annoying or at best tolerable, and very few fulfilling the guise of happiness. To the avid music-lover, however, I had a most enviable job: I didn't have to pay for the show, in fact, was paid to see it; Due to my seniority, I had a position with clear sight-lines to the stage with room to dance if I so desired; And was often served dinner from catering. My simple task was to check passes for backstage access preventing unauthorized fans from entering sacred confines. Still, it became a noisome burden that when I returned to Colorado after a four year hiatus, I chose not to renew that privileged vocation. It's strange how something one truly loves can become a source of suffering.
We are attracted to what promises us happiness. That's logical, but seldom do we know what is truly effective. We run after fortune, fame, or anything that bargains instant gratification to our senses. And we believe that we need these things to be happy. Music may well be my temptress, while in this morning's gospel where Jesus encounters the woman at the well, she is drawn to the only physical stability ancient times made available to her: that is, being in custody of a protective husband. Jesus, however, offers to quench the woman's true thirst with something greater: The water of life which can be construed as a deep connectedness to the present moment. This, he guarantees in spirit and in truth, assures freedom from physical encumbrances, even in the most painful and inconsistent realities.
We think that unpleasant experiences are full of pain. And of course, many are. But there is always something deeper than the suffering. Like the music at these concerts which I repeatedly failed to embrace, there is an underlying happiness still attainable. If we look deeper than our fear, negativity, anger, and hatred, we will be satiated with the healing waters of awareness. "There is something wonderful in every moment, something from the other side of reality," Thich Nhat Hanh says, "[because] there is joy and happiness" at its root. If we recognize and acknowledge the positive in the pain, we can become grateful to be wherever we are. We don't actively seek out painful experiences to be alive. But if we live deeply every moment of our life, listening to the song of the present moment, we may suffer less because we shall witness the nature of inherent joy in all things.
I continue to attend many concerts, now as a journalist chronicling the summer festival season, yet by being immediate to all that is, perhaps I'll hear what I once could not - a graceful melody even in the most strident, atonal cacophony.
pia
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