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Personal Reflection

Cohen understood something most people spend a lifetime avoiding — that joy and sorrow aren’t opposites, they’re partners in the same waltz. The beauty that moves us to tears is the same beauty that reminds us we’re temporary. The song doesn’t ask for your permission to feel; it simply reaches into the softest part of you and starts to play what’s already there.

We chase peace as if it means never aching again, but music teaches a different kind of peace — the kind that coexists with longing. You can close your eyes and still see everything you’ve lost, still feel the echoes of what once mattered. But in that ache, something holy hums. It’s the reminder that sorrow isn’t a wound to be healed; it’s a place the light passes through.

There’s a moment — quiet, heavy, sacred — when the melody hits something you didn’t know was waiting. Maybe that’s the soul recognizing itself. Maybe that’s what Cohen meant when he said the spirit soared. Not upward, but inward — toward the place where pain and beauty stop competing and begin to hold hands.

That’s what music does. It doesn’t cure the ache; it makes it sing.

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Reflective Prompt

What song still finds the version of you you thought had disappeared?
When was the last time you let the melody hurt — and thanked it for remembering you?