Music and it’s Power (A personal thank you to Ben Breedlove)

(The countdown will continue later today. In the meanwhile, please read this posting and share it with others)

I have always been a believer that everything happens for a reason which has led to an acceptance that things sometimes happen that we simply can’t explain, but must embrace.

I was in a bad mood on Wednesday. I’m not going to get into why, I just was. By time I got home that night, I couldn’t do much beyond vegging out on the couch. As I was catching up with Facebook, one of my friends posted a video by Ben Breedlove, a Texas boy who made a YouTube video using music and flash cards to detail his most recent brush with death.

You see, Ben had a very serious heart condition that had caused his heart to stop on several occasions, most recently at the beginning of December while he was walking in the hallway of his school. Sadly, this is a condition Ben had to live with his entire life.

Now if you are aware of Ben’s story, or have picked up on the fact that I’ve been using past tense when talking about Ben, you won’t be shocked to learn that sadly, he died just a few days ago…on Christmas day.

Like most people, I spent Christmas with my “extended” family. It was a very wonderful day of good company, presents, food…and love.

During dinner one of the girls started playing Christmas music through the Kindle Fire she had received as a present that day. After a while, she and her sister started skipping over the songs they didn’t like, and they tried to customize the station. However when they did this, non-Christmas songs began to play randomly.

One of the songs I heard was a snippet of Mad World, a song originally by Tears for Fears and covered by numerous artists including R.E.M. and most recently Adam Lambert–(I didn’t recognize the singer of the version I heard Sunday). While the song was playing, one of the girl’s Aunts realized and commented that it wasn’t a Christmas song, to which I quickly added, no, but it’s a good song.

Ben used an instrumental version of Mad World in his video…a fact I didn’t piece together until this morning while watching a segment about him on the Today show.

Through my sadness on Wednesday night after watching Ben’s video, I tried posting his video (which is below) to my Facebook wall along with the message “remember how fortunate you are.” Sadly, auto correct seems to have gotten the best of me that night.

It’s hard to discount the fact that out of all of the songs in the world, I heard a snippet of Mad World on Sunday night and then again on Wednesday through Ben’s beautiful video. And even though it took me a few days to piece it all together, I can’t help but think and accept that it was no accident that I came across Ben’s video when I did…at a time when I needed reminding of the important things in life.

Thank you, Ben and rest in peace young man.

Part I

Part II