There are many things about which I’m completely ignorant, but music is perhaps the subject where my ignorance annoys me the most. For the first couple decades of my life music meant almost nothing to me, with few exceptions.Since then I’ve grown to love music, but I haven’t learned much about it. Only recently have I decided to stop trying to figure out what’s “good” and what’s “bad” and what’s “too popular” and accept that I like some songs and I hate some songs. There are bands who make me happy and bands who test my reflexes to see how quickly I can change the channel.I don’t know anything about music, but what I’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter. Music isn’t about knowledge, it’s about feeling. Perceiving it through that lens has allowed me to open up to music I would have never considered before.And if music is about feeling, then it only makes sense that particular songs are capable of enhancing those feelings.This evening’s Blogapalooz-Hour challenge is “Pick a song (or songs) that has special meaning to you and explain why."About eighteen months ago my daughter got sick. It was the sort of sickness that temporarily changes a person. The gregarious, funny, lively girl disappeared, and was replaced by someone sad, pitiful, and unenergetic. And even though experience shows that this change will only last a few days—the virus will run its course and she’ll return to normal—it’s still scary.We don’t know how much we take for granted until things disappear.When was the last time you turned on a light and were thankful for electricity? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Just wait until a storm rolls through and knocks out your power for a day.By the end of summer we don’t even acknowledge nice weather. It’s eighty degrees and sunny, but we don’t pay any attention to it. But wait until late January when the temperature doesn’t hit double digits, and there’s disgusting grey slush everywhere, and the wind is so cold that you’re sure that your cheeks are going to freeze and fall off.That’s what it’s like when your child is sick.My daughter has a cough right now. The past couple of nights she hasn’t slept well because she’s coughing so much. We tried propping her up on a pillow, but that only helped slightly. When I wake her up for school, she’s sluggish. But only now am I truly thankful for the nights when she gets deep, restful sleep.Which brings me back to her previous sickness last year. She battled for a few days. She was too weak to eat, consumed with a high temperature, and so sad that her eyes barely opened. The longest days of life are those days when your child is sick. I wanted it to go away. I wanted her to laugh, to draw, to play, to ask for a cookie.And then, after a few days of this, I was in the kitchen making dinner. I had my laptop on the counter, streaming music while I cooked. A song ended, and another began, and over the noise of the music, despite the volume turned rather high, I heard a tiny voice, and looked up to see her standing there. Her hair was a knotty mess. Her nightgown wrinkled, one sock missing.But she smiled and said, “I like that song!”That’s when I knew she was feeling better.And ever since, every time I hear that song, it reminds me not to take anything for granted. It reminds me what’s really important. On really bad days it reminds me that better days are ahead. That I’ve felt happiness before, and that it will return.The lyrics of the song have meaning, but the song itself also has meaning. Every song that impacts us offers that dual meaning. What a song means to us isn’t necessarily the meaning intended by the artist.Songs make us feel. And if we have those feelings, then it doesn’t matter if we’re ignorant. All that matters is the song and that place—real or imagined, in the past or in the future—where the song takes us.The song from above is Shut Up and Dance, by Walk the Moon.Subscribe by e-mail here! IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: How A Tiny Book Made Me Feel SpecialPREVIOUS POST: I Don't Know The Favorite Thing I've Written, or Do I?