ORIGIONAL PUBLISH DATE: March 16, 2016

A couple of days ago the warm temperatures on the morning walk to school introduced a refreshing and lighthearted spring in our step, inspiring us to sing our way down the sidewalk all the while noticing the scent of spring in the air and taking care not to step on the emerging earth worms. It was all joy. The dog wagging his tail happily sniffing every tree, and us giddy with the change of season.

After sending my daughter on with a kiss on the cheek, I turned back up the block and was shocked when I realized that the actual view on this warm damp morning appeared more like the setting for a horror movie, than what our spirits had experienced. Trees, stark and ominous etched patterns in the mottled thick gray canopy that hung above and I wondered why we were so unaffected by such foreboding ambience. As I imagined being in a scene of Steven Kings, The Fog, or on the moors in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, (I clearly don’t watch the Walking Dead, that would likely fit here too,) it wouldn’t take, my humor wouldn't shift, here it was too pleasant. I dawned on me- it was the sinister sound track that was missing.

Then I heard them - so many of them, singing their varied melodies into the warm spring air. The birds had been our back up singers, making a soundtrack that greatly effected the atmosphere, keeping the clouds from injecting their darkness and the trees from appearing eerily lifeless in their current wintery shape. It was interesting to me that something so easy to miss completely, take for granted or dismiss could effect perception of- everything.

What occurs to me in this observation is that a ‘soundtrack’ like this birdsong can be a lot like self-talk; the things we tell ourselves or others have told us that we come to believe as truth. So even when life may APPEAR to be different than what we believe, we don’t see it because our self talk is so engrained we cannot move beyond it. So while our gray sky + bird song formula equaled a positive outcome for us, so the opposite could be true, if the accompanying sounds were howling demon dogs or worse no sound at all... we likely would’ve been less joyful and certainly less concerned for the earth worms. We don’t always have choices about our circumstances, but where I do have the power to chose, it will be for more awareness of the soundtrack I allow to play in my head. More bird song, less hounds-- definitely less zombies.

Have you Checked your Soundtrack?