Without Blindness, There Is No Stevie Wonder
If you’ve ever seen Stevie Wonder direct his band, you know there’s no need for a conductor’s baton or an orchestral score.
Stevie feels the music, like he’s connected to every vibration, every syncopated beat, even the energy of his musicians. He knows exactly when to lift the band, bring them low, and let each part play exactly the role it was made for.
It’s as if Stevie doesn’t see music; he hears it in dimensions that most of us can only hope to imagine.
Stevie Wonder was born premature, his blindness the result of too much oxygen in the incubator. For most of us, sight is a primary tool for understanding the world. For Stevie, the world arrived through sound.
When he lost sight, he gained something else entirely—a channel tuned into layers of emotion and feeling that gave life to songs like Superstition and Isn’t She Lovely—music so full of soul that you feel every note is being sung right to you.
The fact is, we’re all shaped by what we can’t control, even as we spend so much of our lives trying to steer clear of discomfort. But what if every unexpected twist in our lives is essential to who we are today?
Think of it this way: every hard day, every unplanned moment, every door that didn’t open for us, they’ve added layers to who we are, the same way a challenging note adds to a melody.
These are the days that form our perspectives, make us kinder, harder, sharper, softer. For Stevie, that twist was blindness, and his response to it wasn’t to fight against the limitation but to make music that feels limitless.
When we look at life that way, we see that the only path forward is to embrace it all—the easy days, the hardships, the unanswered questions. Life isn’t meant to be fought, but explored, with all its unknowns. It’s not about what’s been taken or withheld; it’s about what we create from everything we have.
Every single experience has made you who you are, right now, on this day.
Just as Stevie has shown us through his music, the point isn’t to avoid the difficult parts but to let them bring out our own unique melody.
Because without blindness, there is no Stevie Wonder. And without all we’ve encountered along the way, there’d be no you.
Kevin
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