A life is the sum of an infinite of moments, each a tiny fragment that combines to forge a single pathway that makes a person who they are. There are some, more than others, that change everything more profoundly than could be thought, being only a few minutes long, a seemingly insignificant event that is magnified a thousand times over to go from an isolated incident to an integral part of a person.

In 2003, in the gym-made auditorium of an elementary school, a little boy’s life changed. Not through some enormous, earth-shaking event, but through a simple moment, a quiet thing, a mumble of the universe, not marked by most of the world, nor even most of those who witnessed it. In a song, literally, all this transpired, and it has not stopped echoing in one heart, despite all the growing that heart has done since then.

The large, echoey room was filled with the energetic bodies of young children. The magnificent thing about first graders is that the floor suits them just as well as a chair, and so, that is where they were. Among these was a small first grader, barely a boy but assured of his maturity, still slight but unathletic. His brown eyes searched the room from the vantage point that few but young children can inhabit, excited, energetic, but somewhat restrained.

On that day, he became someone else. On that day, in addition to being Joseph, in addition to being a student and a first grader and an American and a Catholic, he became a cellist.

The music teacher walked out to the front of the room, and eventually managed to establish order. She introduced, the first instrument, the violin. Joseph nodded knowingly to himself - his sister played the violin. As an older student, a sixth grader maybe, crossed to where the teacher had been, half-sized instrument carried and raised with the halting movements of a child. The violinist played. Joseph listened patiently, unnoticing of the errors that accompanied the performance, his untrained ear neither old enough nor schooled enough to distinguish the admirable but ultimately deeply flawed playing of a sixth grader from more polished music. But, this instrument was not to change his life, in part because his sister played it.

Next came a violist, not much bigger than the violinist, playing an instrument not much bigger than the violin. The same routine followed - cross nervously to the front of the room, instrument under arm; raise instrument, stoically and precisely, but slowly, mentally reciting each step of moving to a playing position; play a short piece, a folk song or easy classical song, using only a little bow, fingers moving out of time, slowly, imprecisely, then leave, escorted away by murmuring applause from excitable but artistically disinclined children.

Then came the cello. A chair was procured, and the performer lumberingly moved the unwieldy piece with her to the seat. She began.

Joseph watched, entranced, amazed at the scene before him. It was not because the performer was any better than the previous two. It was not because the music being played was some masterpiece, either, but in that moment it sounded like the combined beauty of every famous cello concerto rolled into one. He had, to a point, predisposed himself to the instrument somewhat, secretly, with only a sliver of conscious knowledge, told himself that he wanted to be a cellist, but now the deal was made, the pact to be sealed with years upon years upon years of learning to pull beauty from a rotund wooden box.

The somewhat scratchy, poorly intuned notes drifted listlessly across the gym, echoing more than would be ideal on its hard, scarred walls. In the ears of the boy, none of these elements were present - it was Yo-Yo Mah on the stage of the Sydney Opera House, not playing some simple piece but a magnificent cadenza. This was, in part, due to untrained taste, but also due to hope;  he hoped, through that song, that he could be that cellist, and, by extension, that he could be not only a sixth grader in an imperfectly quiet school gymnasium but the most recognizable cellist in the world on an iconic stage.

The piece ended, unceremoniously and abruptly, petering out with mediocre technique, unassisted by the lack of fanfare inherent in the song. But the boy was still full of wonder, for he had chosen. He did not know it, but his life had changed, irreversibly and deeply, giving him another identity and a pursuit that would, if not dominate him for many years, take a significant portion of him and bind, weld, solder, entwine and fuse him with a series of instruments, none of which had any particular quality or significance, no legend, no name to give them importance, only their potential and the hope they signified to make them more than just wood and glue and metal.

And so his life was changed forever, to echo and reverberate in a million fragmented, separate way, all, in part, tracing their lineage back to an unremarkable song played by  an unremarkable cellist in an unremarkable gym played before an unremarkable boy. The unremarkable, however, is never quite so - it lodges in the soul and changes lives, creating more changes that do the same - and all of that, all those unremarkable moments piled together and bound with the cement of time, add up to the most remarkable gift in the universe - a life.