My Bostonian Upbringing, John Kennedy, and Finding a Life of Service in Music Therapy

I was born into a Boston Irish culture. Even though I am not very Irish (many generations back), and I certainly don’t look Irish (tall and blonde), I was raised to revere baseball, hockey, basketball and football. The Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics and Patriots are a part of the culture. But I was also born into something of a higher order.

Unapologetically, I am a Kennedy fan. Not the man, or the men or the family women perhaps, but the spin. I am embedded into the spin of hope that the world can be a better place. That we can be called to do better and to be better with this gift of life that we are given. This is the part of being raised in Boston Irish culture that I embrace.

I was born the day Jack Kennedy was elected. I get that he was a complete man - completely flawed, completely beautiful, completely committed to serving a higher order than just money and power. Power for sure, but benevolence figured into it. An obligation to be of service figured in admirably. Consider this quote, “for of those to whom much is given much is required.” And perhaps it came from his exposure to the Bible in Catholic masses which says, “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required” (Luke 12:48). He lived it and his spirit and the optimism of the times imbues me with this unshakable, unflappable and rapier-sharp insight that the world can be better and should. And the arts, not politics, are my approach.

What it has given me is a calling to serve, to my beloved profession, music therapy. My weapon of choice (as an ardent pacifist) is music specifically and the arts in general. For it has more power to move, to inspire, to inform, to educate, to rehabilitate, to uplift, and to transform than has previously been known outside of poetry and philosophy. The following quote is attributed to Plato:

Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form.

In the thousands of years since Plato, modern science has shown us that music is a biology. We see evidence of it in neurology, its value in neonatology, in studies of human growth and development, and as an asset in rehabilitation and in aging healthfully. Perhaps we also see it when Jack inspired scientific research by saying, 

Space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, and because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.

The marriage of vision, optimism and science can move mountains. It can create innovation beyond the confines of what is known into the unknown. This is the grit of our humanity - to be both visionary and practical, to be divergently and convergently thinking, to be idealistic and evidence-based, to be experiential and thought-full.

Of all that I was born into, I value this the most and will work until my last breath to inform, inspire, and be active and engaged in making this world a better place. This is well beyond just existing, or wanting to make a name or reputation for myself. It is about the essence of a life well lived. That’s all I could ever want or hope for, and I feel that my calling has and always will be music.