Saying goodbye with a song

Okay, let’s face it, even to the most optimistic, exuberant, shining among us happen to have bad days. Those days when our mood translates into seeing everything dyed black. What is called blue modo. And even on these occasions we seek refuge in music. Something to sink into with our pain. An old hit of a pop myth like Sir Elton John (we’re talking about Sad songs, a song released in 1984) says that in some moments we all need someone with whom to share our sorrows and listening to the words of some old singer we can share with him the pain we already know. Generally in choosing what we listen to we tend to prefer songs that confirm our mood. You will probably agree that it is unlikely that at a particularly happy time we will want to listen to sad music, so the opposite is also true.
Listening involves the empathy effect: The fact that someone else is suffering enough to decide to write and put his suffering to music makes every single word that comes out of his mouth assume for us a precise meaning that leads us to share that particular mood. And when what it expresses comes close to what we are experiencing ourselves, the effect is to make us feel understood by someone who has already experienced what we are experiencing in that moment. Listening has the power of distracting and reassuring us, offering us relief. Identifying ourselves in the words we hear reassures us and makes us see our troubles from a new perspective, helps us in the process of accepting the problem and urges us to react. If sadness is an aspect of life that we cannot avoid, facing it is the best way not to be conditioned by it.