Is there anything that does more for the world than music?

What's the very best thing about being alive?

I'm not sure there is a bigger, more open-ended question than that, but I'm going to make it a little easier by eliminating an entire category. Just as Jean-Paul Sartre said, "Hell is other people," I'm going to ask the question without including interpersonal relationships.

After all, all you need is love.

But if we look at so many of the other good things in the world, from sunsets to cheeseburgers, there really isn't any doubt to me what belongs at the top of the list.

Music.

There is nothing in the world that can touch more emotions or enhance more moods than music, and there are few things in this world that come at us from more directions.

What's great about music is that you can love music even if the only thing you enjoy is George Jones. Or Gregorian chants. Or John, Paul, George and Ringo. Or even Simon, Theodore and Alvin.

 I was fortunate to grow up in a home in which both of my parents appreciated music, and a great deal of what I heard at age 7 or 8 in the late '50s was Harry Belafonte and Pete Seeger, among others.

At about age 11, I started listening to rock 'n' roll, and in fifth grade I started playing a musical instrument myself. I never got very good at the cornet, and in 10th grade, my high school band director suggested that I switch to the tuba. He told me I wouldn't get to the top band on the cornet, but he promised me two years at that level if I learned the tuba.

I did. I spent two years in marching band playing the Sousaphone in the fall and playing the tuba in symphonic band in winter and spring. I never got really good at it, and that was exacerbated by the fact that I sat next to the best tuba player in the state and was constantly reminded of my own shortcomings.

But I gained a real love for the music we played, and when I hear Sousa marches, my feet still want to step higher.

I stopped playing after high school, partly because I didn't own my instrument. But I loved music more and more as the years passed. I collected albums, then cassettes, the CDs and finally a big iPod that has more than 13,000 songs on it. In the space of half an hour, I can hear Jacques Brel, Alan Jackson, Linda Ronstadt, Jimmy Buffett, Eric Bogle and Spike Jones. I can hear popular music from the 1930s up to the present.

I've got video of one of the best musicians I have ever known, my son Virgile on the saxophone. He played through high school and his first two years of college, and as a senior he was both all-state -- in the state where it means the most -- and drum major of the marching band.

I'm not sure there's anything -- excluding people and maybe baseball -- that I love more than music. The song I'll use to wrap this up is far from the best music around, but the words mean something, and there is a certain beauty to it.

We really are all better off when we add some music to our day.