A couple of years ago when I was releasing some of my CD albums, I was able to make contact with someone who had a big effect on my early music career.

I hadn’t been in contact with him for thirty years.

Through the internet, I was able to find him and send an email. When I received his response it was as if thirty years hadn’t passed. Our mutual love of music was still an important part of our lives. Even though we had taken very different life paths, it was good to make this contact.

I was able to thank him for his powerful affect on the direction I took with my musical career. He was surprised because our parting thirty years earlier was the result of the clashing of two immature twenty-two year-old egos!

I didn’t appreciate or fully understand his unwillingness at the time to play “other people’s music”. He was only interested in original music. It wasn’t too long after we parted ways, back then, that I too came to the same conclusion about music: I was going to write and produce my own.

In fact I made a career out of it.

Being able to share this with him gave me great joy. Being able to reach out to those who, you see more clearly with the passage of time, have had a positive affect on your life, is a wonderful way of honoring those who you may never be able to thank.

It helps you to put things into perspective and gives you the joy that comes with expressing gratitude to someone who may never have realized they had a positive influence on your life.

It’s good for you and good for them!

-Bob Baran