Behind Pandora’s Box (The one you listen to)

by Arnold De Villa
June 16, 2012
Running on a treadmill is boring. There is no fresh air, no scenery to enjoy, and no other runners who share the pain of being fit. Yet when our bellies run wild and the scales reveal some added gravity, we swallow sweat with hopes of extending an earthly tenure. And so while I burned calories and consumed some distance without moving from my point of origin,, I opened the I-pod and went directly to Pandora. From the side of my ears, the monotony of my self-imposed weight loss program gradually withered within the beauty of an unexpected sound.
For those who are not familiar with Pandora’s Box, it is an “app” that functions as software with a musical database designed from the ideal that each individual has a unique relationship with music, the basic tenet of “The Music Genome Project”, the core and backbone of Pandora’s Box. For those who are familiar, “Pandora’s Box” is akin to a jukebox that does not need throwing coins into a slot every time we desire to listen to something. It is a modern contraption that allows us to choose our favorite songs, favorite singers and all the sounds that we keep during yesteryears. From the tip of our fingers, we then glide through the tunnels of memories triggered by a special sound.
Nonetheless, despite an adroit management of a sophisticated taxonomy of music collection, it is very seldom that “Pandora’s Box” hits on our selected song and plays it the first time we log in. Pandora’s Box will deliberately snob our primary request. It will not play. Rather, it transmits a variety of music based upon our early choices. It will not obey any sequential patterns of execution, but it will surprise us with selections that highlight the traits of music we are individually inclined to.
From one song to another, flashbacks flood with an unknown selection of pieces carefully delivered to match our profile. The experience becomes a gratifying condition as Pandora pops out one surprise after another based upon a simple wish that is not immediately met. As in life, it offers us with something similar or better, choices that seem to come from nowhere.
While I pass through more minutes on my legs, Pandora’s sounds reminded me that even if we do not reach where we want to go in life the first time we try to, we are offered some unexpected choices that could perhaps be better than what we first worked for. Such options make our life more interesting than a tread mill and more fascinating than the calories we burn or the stationary mileage we run through.
I am almost there. Sweat trickles down my forehead, my muscles are tightening, and my respiration is getting faster. Once more, Pandora offers me another piece of music that does not exactly correspond to what I requested. Nonetheless, it amused me with its selection; a piece I have wanted to listen but could not since I forgot its title. There was no way for me to search through humming. Life is the same. There are so many times that we feel our way through our goals, so many times that we run towards our dreams, and so many times that we stumble without ever receiving our primary desires. But it comes up with something sometimes better than what we thought.
Behind Pandora’s Box is the “Music Genome Project” composed of highly skilled intellectuals gifted with a specialized auditory skill. Behind this project is an “Author” so many times denied a proper credential, a “Source” scoffed by those who choose not to believe, an “Origin” who is the ultimate end of all beings. If this were not so, there would never be any sufficient rationale for all the creative genius embedded within technology.
I have a hundred more calories to burn. “Bee Gees” is jiving with their high pitched groove while I shuffled my feet under a rotating rubber sheet. I saw my High School days, weekends under strobe lights, bell bottoms and wide collared buttoned-down shirts. If I did not go to the High School I went, I would have probably not gone to the College I went and would have not probably traveled through other continents that eventually brought me here and eventually led me to write for you.
The myth of Pandora’s Box reserves the best from its bottom after all that is unwanted is first discarded. As opposed to becoming a curse, it became a blessing to those who waited for that last selection to emerge from its corners. It was hope, that certain condition responsible for the continuity of humanity, a disposition that keeps our earth alive, and a virtue that provides us with reasons to survive.
There seems to be an excitement on expectations we do not completely know. That element of surprise is indeed a surprise, a gift, an antidote against the rather humdrum patterns of predictable events. And behind all these is an invisible reason, an unexplained rationale, a non-comprehensible explanation many theologians call “Faith”.
So how did I start running on a tread mill and then jotting down spiritual stuff? When we stop disliking and cease from refusing, when we learn to accept and rise up from strife, when we convert failure into another segment of a recharged effort, the unexpected blows and cruel offerings of lesser evils somewhat end up in the cradle of a cozy bliss. It is for this reason that no matter how circuitous my reflections are, no matter how winding my writings seem, the paragraphs that come out of my head eventually flow towards the Ultimate Cause of all things. No matter where I ran or how I ran, I constantly fall upwards towards that massive Spiritual entity. As a Christian, we call Him God.
There, I have burned 200 calories. Are you aware that for every pound of weight we wish to lose, we have to burn at least 3,500 calories? Between burning and resting and gaining a better fit, I let Pandora flow in the background. I forget about my self-imposed weight loss program. I feel. I hear. I think. I am. Amen.