As I’ve gotten older, I’ve listened to less music and more NPR. Not that I like music less, almost like I needed it less. When I think about it, most music is written to convey powerful emotions–usually love, hate, wanting, celebration. As my life settled into a caring marriage and raising a kid, I needed less belting out with the radio or nights dancing ’til I dropped. I did say needed, not wanted. I’ve heard people say ‘we don’t go out anymore now that we’re married, raising kids, etc. Is that really a change in how we get our needs met more than a change in what we want to do with free time?

And, then things changed…In grief I turned to music again. I looked for meaning, understanding, comfort in songs. I found some. I could listen to the Indigo Girls “In Love with Your Ghost” on repeat and just sob. Sometimes my daughter and I played songs for each other and inevitably we landed on one that drove us both into silence, remembering our missing spouse/parent. It hurt and it helped at the same time– shared experience, shared pain.

And then things changed again. M. Scott Peck describes cathexis in his best-known work, “The Road Less Traveled.” From memory, it is the chemical state we call “falling in love”. Our brains are bathed in dopamine and it makes us a little crazy. We don’t need food, sleep, anything except to be in the presence of the object of our cathexis.

I know it’s chemical. I’m not confused that though cathexis can lead to true cathartic love it is in fact, not that. It is a driving urge, ranging from a pleasant buzz to an almost uncontrollable intensity often without warning. Something that powerful certainly deserves respect, acknowledgement, and maybe even its own playlist.

I can’t tell you what should go in a cathexis playlist. With such heightened levels of, well, everything, what might have resonance for one would be like fingers on a chalkboard to another–a big, long chalkboard that makes them want to scream and tear out their hair and cry. As befits me, I have some KD Lang, some Sting, some newer stuff and, of course, that Paula Cole song from “The City of Angles” soundtrack. No, I’m not gonna tell you, you’ll have to go listen to it yourself.

So what? You say, and I get that. Yeah, its intense, and even crazy-making but it doesn’t last long and most people experience it a limited number of times in their life. Intellectually, I agree with you. But, in this current chemical high, its all I can think about. So, I’m gonna go put “Break My Heart” by Dua Lipa on repeat and try not to bounce off the walls until I see the object of my cathexis again.