We seem to live in a world based more and more on choice — what we read, hear, taste and see is preset to our likes and dislikes. News online instead of from a newspaper. Music from an iPod instead of a radio.

I thought of this on a recent long drive when I had only the radio for company. Suddenly I wasn’t in charge. The airwaves were. Depending upon the angle of my antenna and the pitch of the road I could be listening to a Chopin Nocturne or a local sports call-in show. Sometimes I was listening to both at once!

But the airwaves were kind to me that day. It was morning in the mountains of Kentucky when I heard Brahms’ Second Symphony and afternoon in the mountains of West Virginia when I heard Brahms’ First.

There they were — and not because I had bought and stored them in an mp3 file. (I already have them, in fact.) They were gifts from thin air, music at random — and all the sweeter because of it.