Engage!

Do you ever feel like you're not really participating in the events of your life? The past couple of days--yesterday in particular--I've been experiencing that. My brain felt pretty turned off. I couldn't focus on anything, and when people would talk to me, I would be completely zoned out. Even when I was playing cello, I felt totally uninvolved, which isn't a good thing by any stretch of the imagination. I wonder why I've been so disengaged.

Something I've been pondering lately (as a possible cause of my divorcement from my life) is the concept of energy. We all know the First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another. I believe we think too little about the real concept of energy, though.

What brought me to this idea is the same thing that brings me most of my semi-deep thoughts: music. I watch a lot of performances, and very few of them are what I would classify as "great." I see plenty of technically impressive performances (correct notes, clear delivery, flawless), but that alone is not enough to merit greatness. I even see lots of performances that are "musical" and "expressive," and still I find myself desiring something more. What is it, then? This "je ne sais quois" that makes a particular performance truly great?

I've decided it's a matter of energy. When there is a truly great performer onstage, he or she commands every bit of attention the audience can muster. It stirs something in everyone.

Cesar Millan (the Dog Whisperer) always talks about projecting energy, and that dogs respond to that. I've seen that to be true in dogs (ask me about my story), and I wonder if maybe they have it figured out a little better than we do. Maybe in our attempts to clarify everything using the tools of language, of "communication," we lose a very base and essential method of transmitting information: ENERGY.

I think of Christ and the woman with the issue of blood from Luke 8. When she touched the hem of His garment, He felt virtue had gone out of Him. He was aware of energy.

I wonder if we paid more attention--not to what people said, but instead what they projected--we would be much better in touch with one another. My guess is we would be. We all have the ability to be so much more in tune with one another, with the energies all around us. I mean, in extreme cases we do pretty well: when a friend walks into the room and you know immediately that he or she is stressed out or heartbroken or elated . . . what if we tried to apply that same sensitivity every second of every day, even with strangers?

There's a lot more I've thought about on this subject, but that hasn't been fleshed out in a way that I can articulate just yet. I guess the moral of the story is this: Energy is a big deal.