What an old acoustic taught me about damage, tension, and the music that remains inside of us.

As I hit pleasing notes on my acoustic guitar, one of my favorite outlets of thought and reflection, I hear it. 

The beauty of the sound of vibrating strings. A clean, wholesome, rich, woody, tone. 

My thoughts went back to my childhood. Receiving my first guitar. The excitement, the wonder, the complete overwhelming feeling of not knowing how to properly make it sing.

Within the first few days, instead of banging around and creating noise. I plucked one string at a time. Up and down the fretboard. Not realizing tuning was key, I would lose patterns within days, sometimes hours, as pitch changed. 

This made me think. 

What if life is like an instrument? 

This gift we are giving at birth, this chance at life. 

What if it needs to be in tune to play? 

Just like a vehicle or various other mechanisms in life. 

Living my life, I haven’t been the pillar of anything profound. Many a mistake has been made. People treated badly, pain inflicted upon others emotionally. Deflecting and projecting from an abusive childhood and neglect. 

Self-abuse, trauma, neglecting responsibilities, never feeling I belonged or was good enough. 

Something a vast amount of people have or will experience. 

Yet here I am. 

I am now someone with authority of my life, what I put into it, my outcome. 

To think of all the moments in the past four decades where I felt inadequate, inferior, scared, or even defeated. 

There is no defeat. 

There are only lessons, and another day to play. 

 A new potential song to be written. 

It’s like the analogy of chapters in a book, but this is a song, because life can be beautiful. 

Going back to my instrument, the guitar. 

Over time, we slowly slip out of tune, sometimes we have fractures and need repair. Like myself, several times. 

The suffering I endured shaped a tune later to be realized. 

The damage distorted the piece for years, but it was only distortion, a phase or section that I found was not my identity, my true self. 

As in life, a guitar changes. From the day it comes off the luthier’s workbench, it is new, shiny, clear and defined. 

Over the years, it loses tension, the frets wear with time. The tuning keys start to have some play and take extra care to get to a precise setting. 

Neglect can decay the voice of an instrument, as maintenance is necessary and sometimes overlooked for some time. 

In my experience, a finely crafted instrument can be brought back to life with love, care, and willful intentions. The ones that have seen the sands of time, sing the most resilient and ear pleasing tunes. 

Just as the human condition.

We drift out of tune.

Slowly.

Through pain, distraction, ego, trauma, fear, shame, exhaustion, noise.

And after enough time passes, we stop recognizing the sound of our own lives.

But instruments can be restrung.
Tuned.
Repaired.
Played again.

People can too. 

It’s not about winning, it is about awakening to the fact that being alive means the song is still playing. 

As my fingers move across worn strings and aging wood, I hear something differently now.

Not perfection.

Not mastery.

Just resonance.

Proof that even after years of neglect, tension, distortion, and wear…

something beautiful can still come through.

David