Thirty Keyboards, One Quiet Reminder

As the year begins to pack its bags and quietly tiptoe out, there’s this unspoken pressure to reflect. To summarise. To find meaning. Some of us do it diligently with gratitude journals and colour-coded planners. Others, like me, stumble into reflection accidentally — while running late, stuck in traffic, or walking into the wrong version of a plan we thought we’d carefully constructed.

Christmas morning found me in a new city, slightly disoriented in that pleasant holiday way. I had planned this outing with intention — checked timings, mapped routes, factored in buffers (or so I thought). Naturally, I still arrived almost thirty minutes late. Traffic had other ideas. But perhaps that delay was part of the design, because what I walked into was not what I had come for — and it turned out to be much better.

Instead of the promised artist, the stage was filled with about thirty children, all under fourteen or fifteen, seated behind keyboards that seemed almost too large for them. Before I could fully register what was happening, the music began — and it didn’t stop. Piece after piece followed: old favourites, composers’ favourites, crowd favourites, cheerful medleys that felt stitched together with enthusiasm and courage. The children didn’t just play — they sang along, their voices weaving in and out of the music, sometimes imperfect, always earnest.

There was no pretence. No trying to be impressive. Just hearts wide open, fingers moving, voices rising. For forty minutes, it felt like Christmas had arrived exactly where it should — not wrapped in perfection, but glowing with unexpected joy. It was the kind of performance that makes you smile without realising you’re smiling, the kind that leaves you feeling oddly lighter when it ends.

What struck me most was how alive the music felt. In an age of fast everything — fast fashion, fast food, fast opinions, fast fading relationships — this felt refreshingly unhurried. Classical music, played by children who clearly loved what they were doing, had quietly claimed a prime-time slot in my morning. No algorithms involved.

And yet, as my eyes wandered across the hall, I noticed something else. The audience — young and old alike — sat with heads bent, necks curved into that familiar Facebook Logo shape we all know too well. The universal scroll posture. Phones glowed softly in the dim light, competing with the stage for attention. People were present, technically, but only halfway.

It wasn’t infuriating. Just oddly funny. And a little sad. We’ve mastered the art of being everywhere except where we are. Even in a concert hall, even on Christmas morning, even when thirty children are pouring their hearts into music, we’re still checking messages that can almost certainly wait.

It made me wonder — not in a dramatic way, just in passing — does the audience make the music, or does the music make the audience? Does attention complete the performance? Or is it enough that the music exists, whether we fully receive it or not?

These thoughts lingered long after the last note faded. Not in a heavy, philosophical way — more like background music to the rest of the day. The kind you hum absentmindedly while doing other things.

This is how reflection tends to show up for me. Not as a formal year-end review, but in fragments. In moments I didn’t plan for. In small reminders of how much we overestimate some things — like freedom — while quietly overlooking others.

Freedom is funny like that. We assume it’s always there, so we stop noticing it. The freedom to move, to choose, to sit in a concert hall on a holiday morning, to listen — or not listen — is immense, even if it doesn’t feel dramatic. It’s only when it’s restricted, or interrupted, that we suddenly realise its value.

Beauty works the same way. We expect it to arrive neatly packaged — in silence, in solitude, in perfectly curated moments. But often, it shows up right in the middle of chaos. In missed timings. In children singing slightly off-key. In plans going sideways.

And silence? Silence is rarely absolute.

Even when the room is quiet, the mind rarely is. Thoughts dart around, lists form, worries sneak in. You can be surrounded by the most serene stillness and still feel like your brain is hosting a loud internal debate. Maybe that’s just part of being human — learning to sit with both the noise and the quiet at the same time.

As the year comes to an end, I don’t feel the need to summarise it neatly or assign it a single emotion. Some parts were loud. Some were quiet. Some were chaotic. Some unexpectedly beautiful. And some moments — like that Christmas morning — were gentle reminders that joy doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it just shows up, plays a few old favourites, sings a little, and leaves you feeling grateful without asking you to explain why.

Maybe that’s enough. No resolutions. No grand conclusions. Just a quiet acknowledgment that even in the rush, even when we’re distracted, even when we’re late — there’s still music playing somewhere. And if we’re lucky, we catch it.