One of the powerful ways that music can impact our lives is its ability to motivate us, to nudge us toward what we hope to achieve. Isn’t that why movies with heroes and wanna be heroes come with such memorable songs? Think of “Gonna Fly Now” (from Rocky, for my generation) or “Defying Gravity” (from Wicked, for my kids and grandkids).
My belief in music’s inspirational powers grows every time I hear a story of how a song helped someone reach a goal. I’m not talking about goals achieved while listening as a Fitbit counts your steps. I mean how Deb Van Schaack’s song took her goal, pardon the pun, one giant step further.
“In 2013,” Deb’s story begins, “I took a leave from my job and hiked the Appalachian Trail, starting in Georgia on March 8 and ending in Maine on Mt. Katahdin on July 28.”
Hiking the Appalachian Trail is a major goal to be sure, and one of the things Deb packed in her backpack was an IPod of songs. But she wasn’t thinking of music as a steady soundtrack that most of us require when pushing our bodies hard.
“I was careful not to listen to my music all the time,” she recalls. “But on rainy days or days when I was aching, or on those days when I thought I'd never make it up another mountain, music gave me a focus that blocked out the thoughts of self-doubt when I was anxious and actually helped me concentrate on my hiking.”
And when the Trail got real tough, Deb shares how one special song, "Unwritten," by Natasha Bedingfield, helped her focus: “The song happened to play as I crossed my first state line, from Georgia into North Carolina, and listening to the lyrics on a sunny day as I crossed that line (78 miles into my 2,185 mile trip) was a transcendent moment.”
Unfamiliar with Deb’s song, I took a listen to “Unwritten” and imagined her hearing it, so early in her long journey:
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it…
Tasting the goal of completing the Appalachian Trail is something lots of people—about 4,000 a year—dream of. But only one in four completes it and about half of those achievers are in their twenties, younger folks who might relate to Bedingfield, who was 21 when she recorded “Unwritten.” Even so, Deb says that the song spoke “to the core of my 55-year-old being. The further north I walked, the more the song spoke to me. Every time I heard ‘Unwritten,’ tears would stream down my face.”
No one else can feel it for you
Natasha advised Deb
Only you can let it in…
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
A decade later, Deb looks back on that hike and “Unwritten” as life-defining. “This song is a tribute to reaching for your dreams, no matter your age. Hiking the Appalachian Trail was the largest goal I'd ever set for myself.”
To end her story, Deb asks a question, “What's your dream?” I pass that question on to you, readers. If you’ve got a story of a song that motivated you to fulfill a challenging dream, please share it here. I look forward to being inspired by the song that, as it did for Deb, helped get you to your goal.
