The symphony of self-discovery

When another boy took over from her for the chorus, everyone gasped. These children producing such melodious sounds couldn't be more than 6 years old. But that was not the highlight for me.

When my niece initially babbled the song at home, I raised my brows in inquiry at my sister who was her translator.

“I'm not explaining anything to you this time,” she said, making me laugh. “The name of the song is Glorious, look it up” and I did.

The first thing that struck me was the harmonious organization of the children that rendered that song. Yes, someone was prompting them, but it was their individual concentration that made the song so clean in the ears.

I dropped the song after seeing the video and singing it a couple of times. It was like every other song to me, nice, interesting, with a good melody.

But three days after I first saw that video, an incident made the song come back, with meaning this time.

We were gathered together for the holidays, just like it was our family tradition, talking loudly about memories we had created together when my mom came into the room. I'm certain our noise had disturbed the sleep she was trying hard to catch. We reduced our voices the minute she walked in.

“Good afternoon mummy,” we said in turns. She simply nodded, still groggy from not having enough sleep. She spoke a few minutes after we began murmuring to ourselves again.

“I was thinking about doing a design to advertise the baby clothes I'm now selling” She spoke to none of us in particular but we all kept quiet. “Flourish, you'll do that for me. Then Treasure, you'll create a writing to go with the design.”

My older siblings waited to be called upon but it seemed she was done with us.

“Mummy, are you paying us for this work?” Flourish asked. We knew he was joking but when my mother said “Yes now, if I were using outsiders wouldn't I pay?” We were all shocked.

“Mummy I can do graphics as well o, why didn't you call me?” My older brother said provoking us all to laughter

“No o, when I want to create a website for my business then you will do it”

“And what of me, mummy?” My older sister cut in.

“Perhaps you could be the mediator between my French and German partners when I start importing from there. See how beautiful it is that each one of you has a way of assisting me to expand my business. But soon I won't be paying anyone anymore …”

We laughed it off but it made me realize that even as siblings that we were, we had our individual strengths. My mom recognized that a combination of our strengths could bring us amazing results.

I looked at the bigger picture. It was like that even in the world today. We were all parts of a big whole, everyone had a part to play, and no one was more important or less significant than the other.

It was then I went to look for the lyrics of the song. I saw that it was by David Archuleta. He was an interesting man from the little I read about him, but since I wasn't keen on his biography, I went straight to the wording of the song. There was a part that really interested me at that period, and I wanted to learn it so I could sing it correctly, as it made sense now.

“...And you will know how to let it ring out
As you discover who you are, others around you
Will start to wake up to the sounds that are in their hearts…”

Truly, when we discover who we are, it would be easy to connect with the people who should be in our space, also playing their part to complete the symphony.