Music wakes me up, puts me to sleep, charges my battery, and consoles me; it is a part of my daily life. I often play DJ on road trips, in my classroom, and at gatherings. However, there is a responsibility involved, an audience awareness piece that’s necessary. I can’t just start playing death metal at a dinner party. Nor should I queue up deep old school rap during my preschool circle times. As DJ, there’s a constant pressure to read the room and anticipate the needs of everyone around while keeping your own rhythm intact. It can be exhausting.
The other night, my phone died, so my friend took over DJ. While it wasn’t what I would have chosen to listen to, her playlist was stellar. We played Rummy 500 while enjoying an array of music together. It came to me that I actually enjoyed not being responsible for setting the tone.
This was a revelation. For someone like me, a former full-time mom (and current full-time preschool teacher), I tend to steer, guide, plan, and occasionally over-orchestrate. It’s no small thing to surrender control. I want to keep the mood smooth and avoid jarring transitions. If a song starts tanking the vibe, my instinct is to fix it. Quickly. But sometimes, as I’m beginning to realize, the best thing to do is sit back and let the playlist unfurl.
I started thinking about how this little DJ revelation might apply to, well, everything. We spend so much of life trying to curate the perfect soundtrack, make the perfect plan, have the perfect day, choose the perfect song for the montage in our heads. But life, mischievous little rascal that it is, keeps sneaking in its own tunes. Sometimes it hits us with a track so good we can’t help but dance. Other times it’s elevator music that drags on so long you start questioning your life choices. Either way, the playlist keeps spinning—with or without our approval.
When my friend took over DJ duties that night, I expected to tolerate her choices politely. Instead, I found myself relaxing. I noticed songs I’d never heard before—ones I might have dismissed had I been the one picking. I laughed, listened, and even rediscovered a few classic favorites. More importantly, I realized I wasn’t constantly scanning for what should come next.
Letting someone else control the music was a small act of surrender, but it revealed a bigger truth: Sometimes we rob ourselves of joy by needing to be in charge. We miss out on the spontaneous playlists of life—the surprise songs, the unplanned moments—because we’re too busy orchestrating.
Think of the times when plans/life didn’t go as expected. Maybe a job change, a marriage that ended, or it could be as simple as your body deciding to stop cooperating with your ambitious plans. The instinct is to scramble for control, to find the right song to fill the silence. But what if those pauses, the skipped beats, the unfamiliar tunes, are where the good stuff actually lives?
Maybe the real art of being alive isn’t in curating the perfect soundtrack, but in learning how to listen. To lean into the dissonance. To trust that even the offbeat songs are part of the mix.
Since that night, I’ve been trying—imperfectly—to “loosen my grip on the turntables,” allowing life to play its strange playlist without so much meddling. When the dogs pull me in three different directions on a walk, I try to laugh instead of scold. When a quiet weekend rolls in without plans, I don’t rush to fill it. I let the silence hum. Sometimes I even let someone else drive AND pick the music. (Unless it’s country. I haven’t evolved that much yet.)
What I’ve learned is that there’s peace in letting go. When you stop worrying about whether everyone’s enjoying the music, you can actually start enjoying it yourself. You notice new lyrics and dance to rhythms you didn’t see coming. You might even realize that the crowd, the people around you, are perfectly capable of finding their own groove without your constant oversight.
That night of cards and random songs reminded me that life doesn’t need me to be the DJ all the time. Sometimes it’s better to hand over the responsibility, sit back and enjoy what unfolds. Because if we’re always queuing up the next track, we never get to fully experience the one that’s playing.
