The Beat of Your Drum
Chances are you have heard of the idiom “marches to the beat of a different drummer” or “she marches to the beat of her own drum”. Both refer to someone who is acting independently, who’s behavior goes against popular norms. I don’t think these idioms imply that the person is bad but rather highlights that a person has their own thoughts and ideas about something.
I still remember growing up, my grandmother saying about me “she has a mind of her own” or “she sometimes marches to her own drum”. My grandmother wasn’t being mean or hateful but she was indicating that I sometimes have a stubborn streak and I have my thoughts on how something should be done. So why did I decide to blog about this? Well, with everything going on in the world right now and all that we are seeing and hearing around us, I have been thinking about what does our drum sound like and what is it saying about us.
Have you ever thought about what your drum sounds like or what message others hear when they are around you? Have you ever thought about the message someone else’s drum is saying? I know that many times I don’t. I get caught up in what I’m doing, where I am or a task that I am working on and I fail to listen to the beat that my drum is playing and I fail to hear the drum of others. What if we stopped for just a moment to consider the beat of the drum?
Think about the size of your drum. Drums come in many shapes and sizes. For example, when I think about this I think of someone with a big personality as having a big drum. These are the extroverts. Someone with a quiet personality as having a small drum. These are the introverts. Someone who falls between the two would have a medium drum. The size of your drum may have something to do with its sound but not necessarily its volume.
Our journey has a lot to do with our drum. I don’t think our drum changes in size over the course of our journey but I think its sound, its volume and the message the drum plays in its sound changes along with our journey. In our journey of life we have experiences and those experiences are what bring about the change in our drum.
What changes the sound of our drum? Certainly men and women who join the military and serve our country have a different sound in their drum when they return home. Individuals who transform their life from drugs and alcohol have a different sound to their drum. Individuals who have the strength and determination to break the chains of verbal, physical or emotional abuse will most definitely have a different sound in their drum. I’m sure we all know someone that falls into one of these examples and you can tell that because their drum has been banged up, patched up or restored so that the sound of their drum is different now than it used to be. I love the next quote. I think we could say that every person’s story is why their drum has a certain sound.
Has the volume of your drum changed over time? For many it may not but what changes the volume of someone’s drum? Passion will change the volume of someones drum. If there is something you are passionate about than you speak on that passion and each time the sound becomes louder therefore increasing its volume. Life experiences will change the volume of someones drum. Depending on the experience the volume either increases or decreases. How someone reacts to us or how we react to others can change the volume of the drum. We control how loud our drum is by how hard we hit it.
If the sound of our drum and the volume of our drum can change than what does that do to the message our drum sends out in its sound? For some the message isn’t going to change. It won’t matter what they experience or where their journey takes them, their message will be the same. Nothing wrong with that. We haven’t walked their journey or had their experiences. For others, they will encounter things in their journey that will leave them no choice but to change the message their drum is beating out.
What do the two quotes above have in common? Change! Maybe you are someone whose journey has recently caused a change in your drum and others need to hear the new sound your drum is making. Maybe you want the sound of your drum to be different and you just need to take that step. Maybe you have the chance to help someone change the sound of their drum. Change, it’s never to late.
I said at the beginning of this blog that everything we are seeing and hearing in the world around us has caused me to think about the sound of our drums. People are having experiences in their journey and the sound of their drum has changed or is changing in some way. People are expressing their passion or they are finding that they have a passion about something and the volume of their drum has changed or is changing. I will end with these two questions. Is the sound of our drum what we want to be heard? Do we want to be recognized for the sound of our drum?
Comments
Another strong message! Love your blogs. Hope you are keeping all of them to publish someday. 😊🙏🏻