You’ve definitely heard this before, but there’s no harm in hearing it again: music is an incredibly powerful medium.
Most of us have a connection to our favorite music that runs much deeper than certain songs being popular or catchy.
We hold emotional connections to our music. It is a universal language of love and pain and life, and sometimes, concepts too powerful to express through speech can be expressed through song.
Cristina Settanni was driving down the State Road 408 expressway in Orlando one morning when she saw something that troubled her.
A man was sitting on a ledge that overlooked a portion of highway beneath the overpass.
A number of drivers had called 911 that morning reporting sightings of a man sitting on an overpass ledge.
However, not one single person stopped to speak to the man until Settanni.
“I stopped because I’ve been where he was,” she explains. “I know what it’s like to stand on the ledge and feel like it’s your only option.”
“He needed somebody to show that somebody cared enough to stop, and say, ‘You don’t need to do this today'”
“There was a moment he moved forward,” she continued. “And I did kind of move towards him as if, ‘No; you go, I go.'”
Settanni then comforted the man in the only way she knew how.
Speaking softly, she recited a lyric from one of her favorite Linkin Park songs “One More Light”.
“Who cares if one more light goes out? Well I do.”
Since the death by suicide of former Linkin Park front man Chester Bennington, the band’s lyricism has taken a different tone, and focused much more specifically on helping those going through similar mental health struggles.
When police first arrived, they weren’t exactly sure what Settanni was doing.
“But when I walked up and she had that really calm demeanor,” a local police officer explains. “It looked more like she was trying to help him.”
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Officers were able to help the man off of the overpass ledge.
He was then transported to a mental health facility in the area.
If you are in the right mental head space to do so, you can watch the video for yourself.
The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The number provides assistance to those in crisis 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It is okay to ask for help, and it is important that we help one another.
h/t: Youtube
