Embracing the Millions

Artists of every type, generation and background have powerfully and kaleidoscopically illuminated the most important aspects of the human condition throughout history. There is something unique about the creative process that enables the creator to fully embrace the sheer complexity of life, and, as a result, to enlarge our collective sense of life’s possibilities.

Music, in particular, embodies a particular kind of emotional shorthand, and becomes, for all of us, a universal language beyond words, one that evokes that internal and external textures of all of our lives, enabling us to come to grips with the inescapable aspects of human life that we would all prefer, at times, to deny: loneliness, isolation, loss, despair, grief, and mortality. Music, at its richest, finest, and most powerful, inspires us to wrest meaning from, and become transformed by, our inevitable suffering, replacing violence and hopelessness with imagination and opportunity.

It is in this context that we could perhaps best view the profound and enduring power of “Ode to Joy”. Its message carries on throughout the centuries because it speaks so deeply, through music and poetry, to the most basic human requirement for authentic attachment, and for the sense of trust, security and well-being that emerges from such attachment.

This message is of paramount importance in our contemporary society, in which it too often appears that an abiding sense of brother/sister-hood is constantly imperiled—divisiveness, remoteness and isolation seem to regularly triumph over belonging, empathy and attachment. The frantic, unceasing currents of modern life inevitably lead us to feel more and more alone, less and less held, encountered, engaged, and understood.

When our most elemental need for the human relationship in all of its forms is marginalized, diminished and dismissed, the role of the creative artist becomes even more crucial. For it is most reliably through artistic expression that we can be brought together, that we are empowered to transcend our fears and differences, that we become liberated to grow and learn from each other, indeed to touch each other, and, through so doing, to live lives filled with renewed purpose, worth, and meaning.

Listening to “Ode to Joy”, is, at its essence, an act of love—one cannot hear it without feeling the longing for companionship that lies at the heart of the human spirit, the longing that summons our noblest instincts and brings our world a small step closer to repair, release, and redemption through the ancient and eternal mystery of human contact.

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Dr. Brad Sachs is a nationally renowned psychologist, educator, and best-selling author of numerous books on child and family development, most recently WHEN NO ONE UNDERSTANDS: LETTERS TO A TEENAGER ON LIFE, LOSS, AND THE HARD ROAD TO ADULTHOOD. Dr. Sachs is also a poet and composer, and his most recent CD, HARD TALES TO TELL, is a cycle of 16 songs based on stories his patients have told him about their lives. He and his wife raise their three children and two dogs in Columbia, Maryland. He can be contacted directly at www.bradsachs.com