The goal for most people should not be to feel better but to get better at feeling.
– Shannon L. Alder, author and therapist

American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein’s greatest point of enthusiasm was his lifelong devotion to enamoring young people with music. The Marginalian noted that Bernstein understood that love and learning are inextricably linked, that learning is a kind of love and love a kind of learning, and he used his robust and radiant enthusiasm as a force of illumination.

Bernstein said in Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein, “Life without music is unthinkable. Music without life is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.”

“Though I can’t prove it, deep in my heart I know that every person is born with the love of learning. Without exception. Every infant studies its toes and fingers, and a child’s discovery of his or her voice must be one of the most extraordinary of life’s moments… Imagine an infant lying in its cradle, discovering its voice, purring and murmuring MMM to itself. We must get back to faith and hope and belief—things we’re all born with.

“We destroy our children’s songs of existence by giving them inhibitions, teaching them to be cynical, manipulative, and all the rest of it… You become hardened, but you can find that playfulness again. We’ve got to find a way to get music and kids together, as well as to teach teachers how to discover their own love of learning. Then the infectious process begins.”