Follow the yellow brick heart....

   So the session was a success.   I only played a few tunes with the group, tried to play along with a bunch I didn't know, but I was glad for going.  As I sat there, listening to and at times playing the music I could feel this huge big sigh of relief in my soul.  This is something I've wanted to do for ages.  At one point when the session leader was explaining something I noticed his hands...they were nice hands.  I always notice hands, and I noticed on this hand there was a wedding ring. As he talked about the intricacies of key and rhythm and reels and jigs I thought about how I always used to be very attracted to guys like that.  How if this was 5 years ago (and he was single) I'd totally be interested. 
    But something shifted in me last night.  I admired his skill, acknowledged my lack of that skill, and (here's the hard part for me...) thought about how that was okay...how perhaps if I had made different choices in my life I might have that level of knowledge and skill with music, but I didn't.   Simple as that. But I still love music, and if I practice every day and make it as important in my life as it is to my soul, then maybe I'll learn and get much better, and maybe I won't need to look elsewhere for that.  Maybe I'll have it in me.
   The other thing I noticed, after I had slipped to the listening side of things, was a mother with her very tiny newborn.  She was an older woman...possibly around my age, and she was alone.  My mind filled with questions and musings on what her story was.  What was an older mom doing here, alone, with a very new baby, on a Wednesday night, listening to Irish music while shushing her baby occasionally?  She was sniffling a little at one point and I thought it was from a cold or allergies, but it very well could have been from tears.  I don't know.  I didn't ask...but I wondered, and part of me identified with this woman.  
    I was scared to go last night, but I knew I needed to.  And following my heart it led me to a good place, and more importantly, a place where I needed to be.  I'm starting to realize there is no end to the journey.  There will never be a finish line, there will never be a trophy.  There will only ever be the little rewards along the way, the plateaus or pit stops where you get to look around and say, "wow, isn't life grand."  And then it's back into the fray, of living and learning, loving and growing.