Boredom, stress, and loneliness are not theoretical irritations today; they’re real, everyday afflictions gnawing at the fiber of our well-being. They are the soul’s invisible termites. And yet, for something so concrete, we attempt to cure them with costly distractions—high-fashion timeouts, click-through consumption, dopamine-enabled traps masquerading as TikTok clips—bypassing the age-old, proven balm humming quietly in the background: music.
Whether it’s a sad kundiman from a battered transistor radio or a spontaneous karaoke session after work, music carries a unique power to cradle what the world bruises. I’m not speaking as an artist or an expert, but as someone who has been lifted, over and over again, by the simple magic of a melody.
We underestimate the kind of emotional surgery that music performs without us even realizing it. A mournful, slow guitar line can sanctify your unhappiness before you know whether you are unhappy. A waray-waray folk ballad can guide you out of the maze of your head and plant you in something wise, ancient, and greater than your sorrow. Music speaks a language larger than reason. It does not pose questions and will not seek an explanation. It just seizes hold of you. And sometimes that is enough—to be caught without a second thought.
It’s a silent act of rebellion against the desensitizing din of contemporary life. In a time when stress is valued like a badge of work ethic, when silence is an extravagance and idleness is a sin, music is a preservative. It mellows the bitter edges of difficult days, the way retro OPM hits infuse sari-sari stores in the provinces, or the way jazz overflows from café speakers along downtown Cebu streets—these are not accidents. They are quiet but deep affirmations of our hunger for rhythm, for sound, for those moments when ear and heart are engaged in a conversation.
Music is not only for artists or for excessive emotionalists. It’s for the contractor who hums along to the radio when he’s trying to stay awake. For the widow who sings boleros from her youth while she tends to her orchids. For thesis writers who blast indie rock to keep their sanity going through rounds of revisions. Music, even at infrequent moments, is not an indulgence—it’s a survival strategy. And where therapy is costly and quite just too intrusive, it’s usually the most readily available kind of healing.
Let me be clear—this isn’t escapism. It’s alignment. Music won’t keep us from problems; it allows us to approach them with fewer of them. The right song, at the right moment, can shine a light when life is a foggy blur of impending tasks and unfulfilled expectations. It can remind us that others have felt what we’re feeling, that our inner turmoil has shape and rhythm, and therefore, it can pass. Music says, “You’re not alone,” in a way no motivational quote or self-help book ever could.
Of course, music isn’t a panacea. It won’t fix broken systems, it won’t pay the bills, and it won’t mend every broken heart. But what it can do—what it always and silently does—is to provide relief. It provides relief. It purchases time. It purchases breath. And on the long, twisted road of sort of not trying to make it through the day, that is more than a sort of miracle. Even in its most basic, even thirty seconds of sentimental song, music permits us to be and to feel, without spectacle or stigma.
So, the next time you feel like the world is closing in around you, don’t head to the mall on the corner or mechanically scroll through your phone. Get still. Plug in your earbuds. Allow a song to do what it’s done for so many decades—nurture. You don’t need to do it all day. Just now and then. Because sometimes, one little tune is all it takes to get you back to you.
