Photo by Alex Vámos on Unsplash
Don’t consider yourself a musician – or even creative? Hear a fresh perspective on how to express yourself with music without playing a note. Inspired by The End of Your Life Book Club, this episode reflects on how music enhances our lives – even when we’re not the ones creating it.
I’m Mindy Peterson, host of Enhance Life with Music podcast, where we explore the ways music transforms everyday life. And this is Microhance, a micro-dose of musical enhancement.
Happy New Year! Over the holidays, I had some extra time to read, and one of the books I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) was The End of Your Life Book Club, by Will Schwalbe. It’s a memoir about the books he read with his mother during the final months of her life as she was dying from pancreatic cancer.
This isn’t a book about music – but there was a passage that stopped me in my tracks, because it speaks so beautifully to something I think about often: how music – and art more broadly – enhances the lives of everyone, not just the people who make it.
In the passage, Schwalbe reflects on a book about Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, and Carole King, and on their deep creative drive to express themselves through music. He contrasts that with his mother, who didn’t identify as a creative person at all. She didn’t write, compose, paint, or play an instrument. And she didn’t wish she had.
What struck me most was her clarity and confidence in that. She loved music. She loved art. She loved books. But she was content to enjoy them rather than create them. At one point she tells her son,“Everyone doesn’t have to do everything. People forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support.”
I find that idea incredibly freeing. We live in a culture that often equates value with output – what you make, what you produce, what you post. Creativity is celebrated, and that’s a wonderful thing. But sometimes that celebration can quietly turn into pressure, especially for children and for adults who think, If I’m not creating, I’m missing out.
This passage reminds us: you are not missing out. Music enhances the lives of musicians and non-musicians alike. Whether or not you desire to make music, you can still reap the benefits of its power. You can express yourself through what you listen to. Through the concerts you attend. Through the artists you support. Through the playlists that carry you through your days, your grief, your joy, your memories. You can gain deep pleasure from the beauty and complexity of music – even if you never play a note.
Music adds color and texture to our human journey. It shapes our inner lives. It helps us feel less alone. And choosing to engage with music – to admire it, to support it, to let it move you – is itself a meaningful, expressive act.
Schwalbe also shares how his mother lived this value throughout her life: visiting museums and galleries, intentionally supporting young artists, and continuing to seek out beauty even when her body could no longer keep up the way it once did.
As a book lover, I can’t help but share one more passage that feels especially fitting to close with. He writes that his mother believed books are “the most powerful tool in the human arsenal” – that reading is how we take part in the human conversation, how we learn what needs to be done in life, and how we tell others. It can be how we get closer to one other, and how we stay close – even after someone has died.
Music does that too. Books, music, art – they connect us. They help us bear witness. They help us become more human.
I highly recommend The End of Your Life Book Club. It’s tender, insightful, and affirming – especially if you’ve ever wondered whether simply loving art is enough. Because it is.
I’m Mindy Peterson, and I hope this inspires you to enhance your life with music.
In-Episode Promo
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