I don’t have a particularly large family, but then again it isn’t small either. Each of my parents had two siblings, and they gave me six cousins on my mother’s side and four on my father’s. All of my cousins have an appeal, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about one in particular.
My cousin Mike (on the right, above) is the oldest on my father’s side. My Uncle Edward’s four children showed musical talent, and family gatherings with them always featured guitars and banjos and singing. Everyone enjoyed it, but music to cousin Mike is like oxygen. He simply needs music to live.
He made his living as a salesperson for a big company that makes a lot of different things for buildings and machines, but whenever he had a spare moment he played music or listened to music or thought about music. He can play just about any stringed instrument, and he’s played in hobby bands throughout his life, often with other family members. He’s played for the past several years in a bluegrass band that plays regionally in the midwest, mostly northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
To call it a compulsion is probably accurate, but there’s something of a muddy film that coats the word compulsion. Mike really feels compelled to make music, but music brings him great joy and satisfaction. It’s not drudgery, it’s a light in his life. It’s such a part of him, fused to his identity and the goals that give his life its purpose, that he yearns to do it, so there’s no friction at all with his need to do it.
I envy that alignment, and I hope my writing becomes that for me.
I am sometimes reminded of my brother’s bachelor party when I consider questions like this one. We took Shawn to Las Vegas, where we did the expected shows and gambling and adult entertainment and extravagant meals for a long weekend. It was probably 3am on Sunday morning when I found myself with a couple other friends of his sitting in a lounge cut out of the casino. On the tiny stage was a cover band playing pop hits from the 70s and 80s.
My first thought was dismissive, bordering on disdain.
“How pathetic do you have to be to play someone else’s music in front of six people at a casino at 3am? The effort to practice, the expense of the instruments and equipment, the costumes, the opportunity cost of the time and money invested, and this is the best you can do?”
And then a second though occurred to me (not in time to save me from proving myself a judgmental jerk, of course).
“If they are playing this gig, then it’s obviously worth the sacrifices they’re making. They get to do what they love to do, and someone is paying them to do it. They are performing on stage, playing music with their bandmates, because they want to do this exact thing. And that’s such an admirable trait. Chase your dreams and appreciate the journey.”
I chose to believe that they were living the life they wanted to live, not grudgingly punching the clock on a dream with a different destination.
That Vegas trip was a couple decades ago, and I hadn’t considered my cousin Mike at that time. But thinking about him validates for me the second thought I had on that early Sunday morning: some people are lucky enough to love what they must do.
And I hope to be one of them.