When children listen to music, they don't just listen. They melt into the melody and flow with the rhythm. Something inside starts to unfold its wings - soon the child and the music are one. I feel that way, too, in the presence of music, and my best moments of creativity have often been spent with children. When I am around them, music comes to me as easily as breathing.

Each song is a child I nourish and give my love to. But even if you have never written a song, your life is a song. How can it not be? In wave after wave, Nature caresses you - the rhythm of each dawn and each sunset is part of you, the falling rain touches your soul, and you see yourself in the clouds that are playing tag with the sun. To live is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins. Everything living has a rhythm. To feel each one, softly and attentively, brings out its music.

Do you feel your music?

Children do, but once we grow up, life becomes a burden and a chore, and the music grows fainter. Sometimes the heart is so heavy that we turn away from it and forget that its throbbing is the wisest message of life, a wordless message that says, "Live, be, move, rejoice -- you are alive!" Without the heart's wise rhythm, we could not exist.

When I begin to feel a little tired or burdened, children revive me. I turn to them for new life, for new music. Two brown eyes look at me so deeply, so innocently, and inside I murmur, "This child is a song." It is so true and direct an experience that instantly I realize again, "I am a song also." I am back to myself once more.