Our first “language” is music, according to the latest Psychology Today blog post of Kalamazoo College Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan. Or, more accurately, our first language is the interaction of our bodies with music, which begins as young as 10 months old! We may not synchronize our movements with the sound until the age of four (or thereabouts), but as infants we sure love to enlist our new skills in movement to explore sounds. In fact, this is how we build our knowledge about the physical properties of objects. And young as they may be, infants engage in that exploration very systematically. Finally, infants express their musical sensitivity in the way they listen to music. Siu-Lan provides video examples of the many nuances she discusses in this, her most recent blog post, and the infants she enlists to underscore her points are unforgettable (some have been seen by more than 20 million viewers). Our music-body language may be our first, but it lasts. I was thinking about this idea (and Siu-Lan’s blog) just yesterday on my walk to the bus, reciting in my head two lines from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (nearly the last words the two lovers speak to each other when both are conscious). Juliet: “O, now begone! More light and light it grows.”/ Romeo: “More light and light, more dark and dark our woes.” Two lines of iambic pentameter that match the iambs of a human heart beat, or a walk to the bus stop. What’s interesting is whether the music of the lines (and heart’s systole and diastole) help the hearer more deeply understand the complex combination of sorrow and joy that Shakespeare explores in his play. If so (and this reader thinks it is), then our first language matters a great deal to a life deeply lived.