How to close out Earth Day, April 22, 2019

The sun is setting on Earth Day 2019. All the commemorations, celebrations, and orations – a world of them! – are winding down, wrapping up, time zone by time zone.  

Perhaps the Day’s festivities and more solemn observances have consumed you, either because you were staging them or you were pouring yourself into some form of active participation. Alternatively, your plans for Earth Day may have gone awry, escaped your grasp, eluded you entirely. For you, today may instead have been ruled by competing claims for your attention, whether the daily cacophony of work or family that dominates our 21st-century first-world routine, or emergencies ranging from the merely urgent to the truly dire.

At either end of this spectrum, that excess of passion or those jangled nerves are begging you for some kind of reset – something focused on the Day and its meaning, but not just piling on more of the same. Something different.

Problem is – it’s the end of the day. You don’t have all the time in the world. So it’s got to be a little something – brief, and yet absorbing.

Here’s a suggestion – music. One special beauty of music is that it can’t be rushed, but only experienced as it was intended – a note and a chord at a time. 

But today it can’t be just any music. After all, it’s Earth Day.

So – try this: a short instrumental piece composed by Patrick Williams, entitled Theme for Earth Day, performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra, under the direction of John Williams (no relation). Dates back to the early 1990’s, but chances are good you haven’t heard it. And even if you have – especially if you have – you’ll want to hear it again. You can listen here.

But don’t multi-task. Stop what you’re doing. If you have access to that Earth Day sunset, watch it. Contemplate it. Stuck in an urban canyon? Then close your eyes as you listen. You have a favorite evening beverage? Okay, that’s permitted – but that’s it. Let the music permeate your soul.

4 minutes and 16 seconds of your time – in exchange for 

  • appropriate closure for Earth Day 2019,
  • and maybe, just maybe, a new lease on life?

A decent trade.

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