I used to seethe, stew, and mar­i­nate. If I was in a bad mood, I want­ed to stay in a bad mood because, some­how, I would want to make it worth it. I fig­ure that if some­thing is bad enough to make me sour, I should­n’t be eas­i­ly tak­en out of that frame of mind. It’s the same with for­give­ness. I’m slow to anger, but once I’m there, I’m extreme­ly slow to for­give, for the exact same rea­son.

For years, I would lis­ten to music to help me wal­low in these emo­tions. It would cra­dle me, fuel me until the emo­tion burned out. Listening this way, with a surge of sen­ti­ment, would let me feel the notes, and I would savour every sec­ond, minute, and even­tu­al hour of it.

Lately, though, I hear music dif­fer­ent­ly. It inspires me. It moves me. It helps me out of an emo­tion, instead of into one. And it feels like this change is a reflec­tion of how much my life is chang­ing now, how I’m begin­ning to see the entire world around me in such a pro­found­ly dif­fer­ent way.

As if every­thing that’s past is pro­logue to this.