There’s something beautiful about music that speaks to us on a deep level that nothing else does. It makes us laugh, cry, be brave, and think.
To put it simply, a good piece of music can almost always make things better. When you’re feeling stressed or angry, the right tune can help you relax, and a soft refrain can help you calm down.
Ask Lindon Beckford, who moves patients at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He has been singing since he was a child. It doesn’t matter to him where he is as long as his voice can make people happy and make him feel better.
Beckford has been singing for as long as he can remember, but he had no idea how people would react when he sang for the patients he was driving.
“I sang all the time at work.” It came naturally to me because I was always singing as a child. “It was more of a comfort thing,” Beckford said.
“…so I did that to make myself feel better, but then I realized someone was listening.”
Beckford began to include singing in his daily life after he realized it was helpful. Since he’s worked at the same hospital for more than 30 years, he’s learned a lot of different ways to make anxious people feel better.
He replied, “From what I can tell from the conversation, is the patient in pain?” What song can I sing to make them feel better?
“When I give them their medicine or take them back to their room, they’ll say, ‘You know, you make this trip from here to there so much easier because you sing.'”
Beckford sees it as just a way to say something he loves and knows. But it can make all the difference for his patients.
“I remember the first time a patient traveled with me—I was taking her to the cath lab—and she started singing along with what I was singing. I was like, ‘Oh,’ it was so amazing, I was like, ‘Wow,’ and that has happened a few times since then,” Beckford said.
No one needs to be told that Beckford really cares about the people he is moving. Their hearing his words calms them down and lets them know everything will be okay, even when they are worried, confused, or even scared. That is one of the most valuable things in the world.
Listen to Beckford sing in the video below: