Music has been interrupting me lately.

Not in an annoying way.

In the gentlest ways.

I’ll be driving somewhere...

And out of nowhere, a melody shows up.

Sometimes it’s just a few notes.

Other times it’s a chorus.

Every now and then...

It feels like an entire song arrives all at once.

I’ll think,

I need to sit down and record that.

Then I get where I’m going.

The moment passes.

Life keeps moving.

A few days later...

Another melody.
Another lyric.
Another idea.

They never really disappear.

They just wait.

That’s when I realized something...

Some of my best music has never been recorded.

Not because I never heard it.

Because I never took the time to capture it.

Of course, not every melody waits forever.

Some disappear as quickly as they arrive.

Some opportunities have an expiration date.

Some conversations become impossible because we waited too long to have them.

That’s part of life.

But I’ve discovered something else.

More often than not, the things I thought I’d lost...

Aren’t really gone.

They’re still somewhere inside me.

Quietly waiting to be rediscovered.

Watching my son made me think about this differently.

He gets attached to certain toy cars.

For a few days, one particular car becomes his favorite.

He carries it everywhere.

Then one day...

It disappears.

We look under the couch.
Behind the curtains.
In the toy box.

Sometimes we never find it that day...

Or the next.

Then, a week or two later...

There it is.

Under a chair.

Behind a pillow.

In a corner of the house we’ve walked past a hundred times.

The funny thing is...

The car was never really gone.

It was exactly where it had always been.

Waiting to be rediscovered.

I wonder if some of the things we mean to do are like that.

Not the opportunities we’ve truly missed.

Those are real.

But the parts of ourselves we assume we’ve lost.

The desire to create.

To learn.

To write.

To build.

To become.

To finally begin.

Maybe those parts of us are still there.

Maybe we’ve just forgotten where we left them.

Most of us carry around a silent list.

Things we’ve meant to do for months.

Sometimes for years.

We tell ourselves we’ll get to them when work slows down.

When the kids are older.

When life gets less busy.

When the timing feels right.

We become really good at protecting time for what’s urgent.

Not always for what’s important.

I don’t think most dreams disappear all at once.

I think many of them slowly become "one of these days."

And then one day...

Something reminds us.

A melody while we’re driving.

An old notebook.

A conversation.

A photograph.

A toy car found beneath the couch.

And for a moment, we remember.

Not just what we wanted to do.

Who we were when we first wanted to do it.

Maybe that’s why some ideas keep returning.

Not because they need us.

Maybe...

We need them.