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About three years ago, after a break of fifty-three years, I started singing again. Ever since I had two massive heart attacks sixteen years ago, combined with a gradual loss of mobility in my legs, my breathing capacity was much lessened, and any kind of exertion would literally ‘puff me out’. Then, eight years ago, after I was diagnosed with terminal blood cancer, I was told that one of the many significant consequences of my illness was a lack of oxygenation in my blood. For several years, my absence in mobility (caused by over 60 years of worsening Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis) meant I was unable to exercise my body muscles enough, and subsequently, my breathing became more laboured. My lungs were functioning around 80 percent of normal capacity.
Then, one day I read a newspaper article saying that singing practice daily would improve both lung capacity and oxygenation of one’s blood. So, I determined to start singing for an hour or more daily, and the bottom line is that it has worked! The daily singing practice has improved my lung capacity and the level of oxygenation in my blood by 20 percent, and my daily readings have shown that this progress has been maintained. I now sing a new song daily on my Facebook page, and over the past three years, I have video recorded around one thousand songs on my YouTube Video Channel. Click to subscribe for free.
I have also found that singing songs from my yesteryears provided me with so many happy memories. So often, we forget the mental associations which are indelibly linked to our past, and particularly our childhood years. My daily singing practice not only makes me happier, but it reminds me that ‘all our tomorrows’ are destined to become a reflection of ‘all our yesterdays’. I have also discovered that in ‘all of our yesterdays’ we find a different ‘you’ and ‘me’. I know that the past is the past, but I also believe that footprints of former experiences remain with us forever and are often indelibly associated with our ‘songs of yesterday’.
Ever since mankind first learned to sing or strike a tune, we have tended to associate a particular song with a special moment in time, or a specific person, or a memorable experience. Most loving couples have their own song that enjoins them in happy memories. It is not unusual, whenever a lover finds themselves having lost a sweetheart (through death, rejection, or desertion) to often replay ‘their song’ as they lament the loss of their past love.
As a Probation Officer for 27 years, I remember working with a woman who was ‘raped’ by a total stranger in her own house one morning as she went about her housework. At the time of her ordeal, she had been listening to a certain song on her radio which was one of her favourites. Ever since that morning, she could not bear to hear that song, and would cringe in automatic pain if ever she heard it in the background of any environment, pleading, ‘Turn it off! Turn it off!”
Yesterday’s songs usually make us happier to hear and sing again. It is the sadness and the emotional upset of our yesterdays we ought to ‘let go of’ if we want to have such bad feelings ‘let go’ of our future. One of my mother’s sayings I remember so well was, “You can’t free yourself for a better tomorrow, Billy if you are hanging on to yesterday all the time!” If ever my mother saw me fretting about something that had happened yesterday, she would always say, “Forget yesterday, Billy, live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself.”
From the many alcoholics I have known, especially those who learn to abstain, each one learns from their A.A. meetings, ‘To take one day at a time’. Whenever we start overthinking about bad moments from times past, we often over-complicate our lives and overwhelm our emotions. As a writer and author of 65 published books, my personal advice is always to constantly tell oneself, “Remember, you cannot rewrite yesterday’s pages, but tomorrow’s pages are blank, and you have the pen today, so write something good about tomorrow”.
Cloak yourself in modesty and never forget that the only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday. The Dalai Lama once said, “There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called ‘yesterday’ and the other is called ‘tomorrow’, so ‘today’ is the right day to love, believe, do, and mostly live.”
The most important lines which are contained in my song today remind us about the ‘Power of Love’ in all of our days, when it says “The truth never changes and the good things remain the same, like saying, ‘I love you’”.
Love and peace Bill xxx