Tuning In to the Orchestra of Relationships

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Listening to an orchestra is one of my happy places. Except I don’t listen to an orchestra. I listen to French horns and trumpets, snare drums and cellos, timpani, violins, flutes, trombones, oboes. Music is richer when you hear each instrument that makes it, tuning in to their individual parts, listening to their unique sounds, appreciating the harmonies and rhythms that only they are carrying.

Wouldn’t life be richer, too, if we tuned in to each other the same way?

“I’m the kind of person who will restart a song because I got distracted and wasn’t appreciating it enough.” That’s not a direct quote from me. I found it on Facebook. But if you want to describe me in one sentence, you can use that one. I’ll turn on some music at work, clicking and typing away while it plays in the background, focused on the task, not the song, until suddenly–Wow, what is going on in that brass section?

Back to the beginning to listen this time.

Oh, yeah. It would have been a shame to miss that.

And then I play it on repeat.

Is this just me?

If you’re scratching your head, indulge me while I try to show you what I’m talking about.

A Tuning In Experiment

I’ve linked below one of my favorite songs to get lost in. Yes, I know the group is unfortunately named, and most of their music I can’t recommend because it sounds exactly like what they call themselves, but something about this one, ironically, makes me homesick for the trumpeting angels of heaven.

Listen to it one time through, paying no particular attention to anything. For the full effect, wash dishes while it plays. Do a puzzle. Comb your hair. Dust the living room. Be distracted.

Now put down whatever you’re occupied with and listen again. Maybe even close your eyes. (And I recommend headphones. You’ll hear it that much better.)

Do you hear the piano? The violins? Identify their harmonies. They’re not all playing the same thing.

There’s the flute.

Did you notice the brass picked up the melody?

And now the trumpets! Doesn’t that triumphant sound make you smile? Not to mention all those bold trombones behind them.

Listen to the rhythm of the drums. The driving force of the beat.

Hear the vocals join in and just listen to it build. Every instrument twisting and weaving and ebbing and flowing around each other like an exquisite tapestry.

Creating the climax together.

Carrying each other back down.

Do you feel it?

I don’t know, maybe it’s still just me. Music has always struck chords in my soul. It’s easy to be carried away on a stirring piece.

But whether this experiment carried you away or just confirmed that I live on my own planet, keep reading. I think its message is universal.

Tuning In Is Complex

There were initially two truths that struck me with this musical experience. First, the importance of appreciating the individual gifts and strengths people bring to the table. Second, the importance of stopping the music and starting over when you haven’t been.

If it were as simple as that, this post could end here. I’d give you a sound, “Pay attention!” and all your relationships would be revolutionized.

But I’m finding as I try to put this in writing that this concept of tuning in is as multi-faceted as a diamond, and “Pay attention!” is not enough instruction.

Assuming that experiment was at all effective, would the song have sounded any different the second time if all I said was, “Listen”?

Or did it make a difference that I specifically named the piano, the violins, the flutes, the trumpets, the drums? Was it easier to hear them?

Relationships are challenging, and if ever a person lived who was no good at them, it’s me. It’s bad enough being a full-blooded introvert without also living in survival mode. Any attempts you’d like to make or at least know you should make at participating in the world and lives around you get smothered by the effort it takes just to participate in your own. To get out of bed and go to work and try when you don’t know why.

So, for me, leaving relationship advice at “Pay attention!” would be like handing a two-year-old a tire iron and saying, “Good luck with that flat, buddy.”

I need specifics. Guidance. Where do I start?

If you’re wondering the same thing, I’m not sure I have any answers.

But maybe by the end of the post we’ll at least be twelve-year-olds with a tire iron. Who will still have lots to figure out, but also a little more to go on.

Know Thyself

There’s a principle among the teaching methods employed at the school where I taught called spheres of government. It’s the idea, the truth, that who I put at the center of my life influences how I govern myself–hopefully it’s God–and that how I govern myself influences my family, how my family governs itself influences my church, my church influences my community, my community, my state, my state, my nation, and my nation, the world.

To put it in terms of this subject, the orchestra does not make its players. Its players make the orchestra. And whether it harmonizes like a masterpiece or just falls to pieces depends on who the conductor is and how well he’s followed.

How well he’s followed depends, yes, in part, on your awareness of what the other instruments are playing. If you don’t know when the cellos come in, you might mistake their cue for yours.

But you might do that anyway if you don’t know when you come in.

Before you can appreciate and harmonize with someone else’s part, you have to know yours. Relationships are between two people–well, three, ideally. You, your spouse/sibling/friend/parent/coworker, etc., and God.

That means if it’s going to work, you have to know three people. And you’re one of them.

What makes you tick? What makes you do the things you do, react to things the way you do, like things the way you like them? Are there things you need to work on, habits you need to change? Are there things you’ve been trying to change that you don’t need to? Attributes of your personality you’ve been apologizing for that you shouldn’t? Are you a violin feeling guilty or subpar for not being a French horn?

Being single, I’ve found, gives you lots of time to get to know yourself. I’ve probably spent more time psychoanalyzing myself the last ten years than Monk ever spent with his therapist. When life doesn’t go the way you hoped, you have to stop the music and reassess because this orchestra of events that is your life is not the orchestra you thought would be your life.

What is God doing? Where’s the melody in this song? What harmony is this experience creating? Is there some discord with that experience? No, God’s resolving it. Okay, but what in the world is going on over here?

I’ve been angry at God. Life has not been the song I wanted to hear. It sounds like chaos. The antithesis of harmony. But I’ve also been watching him like I never would have if life hadn’t made me pay attention to the song he’s writing and conducting. It’s taken boatloads of faith to believe that what sounds to me like a cacophony will one day be a symphony playing harmonies beyond description. But that faith has grown a relationship with him. And coming to know him, I’ve come to know myself.

Perhaps the greatest strength you can bring to a relationship is to know who you are. Because no matter how much you value the French horns, you can’t harmonize with them if you’re trying to be one yourself when you’re actually a violin.

Harmony Meets Diversity

I think we sometimes mistake appreciation for shared passion. We think if we truly valued what someone brings to the table, we’d figure out how to bring it ourselves. If we really loved them, we’d love what they love.

And vice versa.

I’ve fought a few internal battles to this effect over my family relationships because–well, let me introduce you to them.

A sister who finds paradise in new food experiences.

A brother who comes alive with a hunting bow in his hand.

Another brother who recently checked an item off his bucket list watching the 49ers live in San Francisco.

Yet another brother who played with tractors in the sandbox and now plays in bigger sandboxes with bigger tractors.

A sister who keeps six chickens and built them the cutest coop in town.

A brother who watches college math lectures for fun.

And a brother who’s crammed the garage with bikes.

Then there’s me. The writer. Lover of words and stringing them together just so. Whose palate is not what you would call sophisticated and who has zero ambition to operate a tractor, fly down the road on a dirt bike, sit on a mountain with a bow, or raise chickens. Who knows nothing about the NFL, and who infinitely prefers English to math.

How do you not feel like an apathetic deadbeat for not enthusiastically jumping in to someone’s interests and pursuits when they’re so vastly different from yours?

I think you have to recognize the difference between listening and becoming. And know that listening is enough.

You don’t have to play a cello to hear it. Or to love how it sounds.

Diversity Meets Harmony

I don’t love exotic food. But I enjoy hearing about my sister’s experience in an interesting restaurant.

I don’t have to love hunting to appreciate an elk roast from my brother.

So I don’t love football. I’m still interested in my brother’s once-in-a-lifetime trip.

And if tractors aren’t my thing, that doesn’t mean I’m not incredibly grateful for the brothers who dug the hole for our house and backfilled the foundation.

If I don’t have it in me to raise chickens, I still appreciate a fresh egg for breakfast.

I don’t have to love math to appreciate a mind that knows how to figure out what I can’t.

I don’t have to have a mountain bike obsession to be glad my brother’s influenced me to buy a decent one for myself.

And they don’t have to love writing to still maybe get a little something out of mine.

I’m not suggesting that as long as people appreciate your interests, you don’t need people who share them. It’s lonely being the only trombone in the orchestra.

But though you find the company of other trombones, don’t forget to thank the strings for what they add to your part. Which, on its own, might be rather monotonous at times.

I’m not suggesting there aren’t times and places to participate in someone’s interests you don’t share. Everyone needs someone who’s willing to try and see what they see.

But if attempting to play a French horn sparks no passion for it in you, it’s okay. No doubt you’ll at least find new admiration for those who do play it. And maybe a deeper conviction that you really are happy where you are.

What I am suggesting is that diversity in relationships doesn’t have to be their downfall. Sometimes we let it bring them down. The differences frustrate us. Isolate us. We unhappily try to be something we’re not. Unfairly expect others to be something they’re not.

But stop the music. Imagine that little screeching sound as you lift the needle off the record and just stop. Close your eyes. Go back. And listen again. Tune in.

To your part. You don’t have to play theirs.

To their part. They don’t have to play yours.

To the conductor. He’s your hope for harmony.

If God writes a unique part for both, then leads both, and both follow, diversities aren’t frustrations. They’re the difference between a boring solo and an orchestra you can’t get enough of.

For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.

1 Corinthians 12:14-18

I’ll be the first to admit there’s plenty in this post that needs application in my own life, but if you’ve read something here worth applying in yours, I hope you’ll leave a comment and pass this on.

Here’s one last favorite piece to send you off.

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