For a long time I held the belief that one’s life should be “free”. By free I meant that there should be no bounds, no boundaries, no deadlines, no concrete structures, no complex to-do lists, time-tables, calendars etc.
That is, until I started learning music.
I learned music at different times in my little life from three different teachers: the first was at an institute called Bhai Daya Singh Gurmat Sangeet Academy, where there was a madam who introduced me first time to ragas and tals. I learned that there was a method to madness: That didn’t simply put your fingers on the black and white keys of a harmonium and start pressing any keys in any order so that wonderful music took birth. Music had rules, there were often sort of “molds” – eight, sixteen and sometimes six blocks into which you arranged some particular sounds and notes, and also the lyrics from what you had to sing. This system was so well designed that you could perform it with any instrument that could give a beat, like a tabla.
The second time I started learning music was years later, from a tablavadak (a tablavadak is a person who plays tabla). This time I learned tabla along with harmonium. It was a prized experience: I learned how both were tuned with each other to play wonderful music, and how one’s beats fitted with the other’s. The third too was an excellent teacher, my personal favorite, also a very wise and learned and spiritual soul, who strengthened this understanding further: he made me understand how this understanding originated, how a well-formed rule can work sometimes better than a freehand creation.
Hence, music taught me my lesson with order: how important a beat and rhythm was. Sure, even in a monotonous beat in music, you could add wonderful variations, little pieces of charm, but that too never broke the rules.
I used to believe that one should be “free” so as to have a more meaningful life, but this lesson overturned this view: order could be as beautiful. The seemingly random patterns of nature also follow order: there’s the Fibonacci numbers, there’s the Golden Ratio and there is pi. There are laws of physics, laws of chemistry, laws of biology, laws of math, and no piece, trees, art, heart, creation, elation, flower, shower, space, place in nature is out of order.
I reached the conclusion that even if you designed your life so as to have seemingly repetitive things every day, doing similar things day after day, it didn’t spoil life: you just have to learn to enjoy music.
Our life is like music, I discovered. You can compose a song in free verse and sing it, and you can compose a song in a well-formed order-following rhyme and rhythm system, and sing it as well: no system or way is better than the other.
What you do every day is the beat, it gives life music: you provide the song and a beautiful symphony is complete!
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