The Beauty of Dissonance

Dissonance

When I first think about Dissonance, I think about it in terms of music. Dissonance is a lack of harmony between music notes.

Like only playing the first part of the song “Chopsticks” on the piano. I’m cringing just thinking about it. There’s nothing beautiful about banging on 2 or more piano keys right next to each other. It’s cute when my young kids used to do it, but not pleasant.

That being said, there is a time and place for it. One of my favorite piano songs I learned as a teenager is entitled “All of Me” by Jon Schmidt. At the climax of the song there’s a brief moment where you literally bang your right forearm on all the keys for one measure! It’s fun! It’s interesting! It’s exciting and loud! It makes an audience cheer as they’re not quite sure what just happened! And it’s a wonderfully exhilarating song to play.

So how can dissonance on the piano go from cringe to making people cheer?

I think it depends on the what comes before and what comes after.

Dissonance, alone, is not enjoyable or beautiful. But mixed in with musical harmonies, all of a sudden it becomes the most interesting and beautiful part of the song.

Cognitive Dissonance

I often feel a mental toll on my mind from the world I perceive around me with endless contradictory information and ideas. I feel this cognitive dissonance at home, at work, in politics, religion, community, social relationships… My mind is sometimes screaming at me to get a grip. To get out from the cringe. To run away from the uncomfortableness of being undecided or uncommitted one way or the other.

As an overall very passive individual, running away from a difficult thing is an unfortunate special skill I possess.

Back when I was in college, I was a horrible procrastinator. Unlike high school, college facilitated an element of freedom in regards to schedule, classes, and studies. I would frequently put off large assignments or sufficient study time for a test. This of course resulted in everything coming crashing down at the end of the semester. My brain could not handle it. My mental capacity would be overloaded, and in the moment I should have been frantically studying or preparing myself for end of term projects and exams, I would find myself distracted with music or games, or simply just fall asleep, too exhausted to endure the mental load. I would just let myself escape and run away from the consequences of my choices, and deal with whatever result came about later.

School is behind me, and now I deal with the much more pressing burden of providing for my family and daily survival. I often feel this same mental strain I felt in college in regards to cognitive dissonance, but multiplied a hundred fold. The stakes are much, much higher now.

If I fail, I won’t just get a low grade and a bad test score. I might not be able to pay the mortgage or make the car payment. I might forget to do this or that task at work and risk failing at or losing my job. I might make terrible parenting decisions and unintentionally hurt one of my children with my words or lack of attention and care. I’ve had to learn how to apologize and ask forgiveness from my children on more than one occasion. If only I could be as quick to forgive as they are…

I could write a novel on my own parenting fails. But I can save that for another time.

The point is, the mental toll is there. And I don’t always know what the right thing is to do.

The Beauty of Dissonance

But that not knowing. That undecidedness. Those mistakes and errors. Those are not something to be afraid of. To be ashamed of. To run away from. They’re actually quite beautiful.

Maybe not alone, by itself. But mixed in among the beautiful harmonies before and after.

Over the past few years, I’ve learned to be more comfortable in the uncomfortable. I’ve found more joy among sadness. I’ve discovered how to navigate the bridge of Assertiveness between Passive and Aggressive peaks. I’ve tried to be less judgmental and more open-minded. If something doesn’t make sense to me, I try not to be consumed by it. This might sound odd, but I’ve learned to enjoy sometimes NOT knowing. NOT having the answers. Letting the mystery of whatever I’m trying to figure out keep me on my toes. Keep me wondering. I relish relaxing in the hammock of dissonance held up by two contrary concepts or ideas. Not out of laziness or indifference, but simply taking the time to step back, think, ponder, pray, prioritize, and not worry so much about the outcome.

Nowadays anyone can look up the answer to anything at any time. Even in my own home, we have little Google Home speakers that mykids will constantly ask questions to. In fact, they will fact check me! They’ll ask me a question, I’ll give them an answer, and then they’ll turn around and ask Google the same question! How rude! I wish I could have fact checked my parents when I was a kid!

I feel fortunate to have grown up in a time that I didn’t have that kind of access to information. When I was a kid, if I didn’t know something, I had no choice but to just sit there and wonder. Maybe I could ask a parent or consult an encyclopedia, or go ride my bike to the library to look it up, but those were pretty much my only options. I had no other distractions. No readily available contradicting information. And as a result, I had to use my imagination as my guide through childhood.

Both as a child and even now as an adult, I learn a lot by trial and error. Maybe I’ll just make a choice and if it’s the wrong one, so be it. I can always correct my own course. I’ve always thought of myself as building my own path as I go along, instead of following it. It’s not a straight one. There’s a lot of U-turns. Probably a few abandoned piles of rocks along the way as well. But those are MY rocks. May they serve as beautiful landmark reminders of what NOT to do, of where NOT to go, and what did NOT work.

My 11-year old daughter Zoe has a little visible scar over her left eyebrow. She got it when she was 5 years old and fell off a rock at the Zoo. I tell her it’s her “Beauty Mark.” Because it is. She is the most beautiful little girl I have ever seen in my life, and that little scar is part of that beauty. It hurt. It wasn’t fun to get it. But there among the beautiful and wonderful person that is Zoe, it’s beautiful.

I want to continue to live my life surrounded by the Beauty of Dissonance. I don’t want the music I listen to to only have perfect harmonies. I don’t want everything to turn out exactly the way I planned it. I don’t want what’s easy. Life is hard, and I like it that way. An easy life is a boring life. No struggle means no dissonance means no beauty.

When I’m playing the piano and my kids come up and start banging on the keys to play with me, or some other song in a completely different key, it sounds terrible. But rather than push them away and tell them they’re ruining my perfect song, I like to let them play with me. That beautiful dissonance they created will make the harmonies sound even sweeter, whenever they come.

It might take a while, and I may even have to plug my ears occasionally. But rest assured, the beautiful music will come.

And with it, beautiful dissonance.