Coulda

“Coulda”

In my teenage years I played flute in the LaBelle High School band and learned how to read music from the band teacher Mrs. Morgan. My dad purchased an electric organ for our home so I learned a little more about reading music on it. After high school playing musical instruments got left behind, shelved you might say.

In my late twenties I decided to take piano lessons. My teacher was an elderly lady from Jamaica. She was aware of my limited training. During our first lesson while I was playing the song she had placed on the music shelf of the piano, a song I had never seen before, she exclaimed in her heavy Jamaican accent, “OOOOH Child! You must have a Dubby attached to you!” I stopped playing and looked at her with surprise, “What is a Dubby?” She clasped her hands together with a big smile on her face. “In English you would call it a ghost.” She squeezed by shoulders, “Don’t worry child, it is a good one, no one could play like that without a good Dubby.”

Back then I was young and inexperienced in spiritual matters so it kind of freaked me out. I didn’t understand the magnitude of what she was telling me. I just thought of playing the piano as a fun hobby. Suddenly it felt scary and seemed like a lot of pressure. While I didn’t recognize the significance of my talent, I did recognize the amount of commitment that it would require to fully realize it’s potential and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice the time. It was easy to use work and family obligations as excuses to put playing music on a shelf again.

Walking away from the piano is a decision I still regret. I wish I had kept playing as a fun hobby, who knows, I might “coulda” been a great player.

We all have those moments in life. Those “coulda” moments. As we age they sometimes circle back to haunt us. But instead of getting lost in coulda, woulda, shoulda thoughts, whenever those thoughts blow into our mind we can choose to let them pass gently through. We can use them as encouragement, understanding that we still have many forms of untapped potential resting in our being. Each day we get to choose what we will pursue, what we will invest our time in, how we will think, what we will read, listen to, watch, what we will learn, what we will try.

We can choose not to worry about being great at something, just have fun doing it. It’s okay to try something, many things, and not be good at them. Heck, it’s okay to be bad at them. The point is to try whatever we feel our spirit is leading us toward. Just the experience of doing something new, or something old we have wanted to do, will give us fresh insight into ourselves and how we experience life.

We’ll never know what we “coulda” been if we don’t try.

Lord give me the inspiration and courage to try the things you send as my soul desires and help me to eliminate “coulda” from my remaining years.

E.A.Fussell
08.16.2023