2010 is going to be an interesting year for all of us, this is my prediction. i think “fast and furious” would describe how i think it’s gonna be. i hear some of you now: why? why, lisa? what will make it so? i will enlighten you, but first i need to tell you about a song that i listen to every year at this time: same old lang syne. those of you that follow my blog will know that the angst-ridden, handsome, floppy-haired singer-songwriter’s from the 70’s touch my heart and get me all warm and fuzzy. and sentimental. and melancholy. this particular dan fogelberg song is no different. you see, when i was 11, my mother turned me on to this song. we would listen to it in the car on, on tape, whilst we travelled the day after xmas to the many many shopping malls just outside of our zip and area code (sales! specials! buy it and it will make you feel so much better about your plight on this earth for 10 minutes!). my mom and i shopped a lot. it was our activity. judy would be quite wistful as she listened to this song, but i was too young at the time to really understand why. but the way in which my mother changed when she heard the lyrics to this song made my 11-going-on-2000-year-old-soul very happy. this song touched her. i saw a side of her that i never got to see: the side that was real, that hurt, that wondered, “what if”. it is only now, as my 40th year runs to greet me and meet me (hellooooooooooo, lisa!) that i understand. i get it. each new year seems like a new start, does it not? yet often, we are plagued by our own self-doubt, our own inadequacies, the old bullshit that just keeps on talking to us despite how far we have come in so many other areas. this self-imposed doubt comes, i think, from the bazillions of choices and subsequent decisions each of us is tirelessly making, oh…every moment of our lives. “she said she married her an architect, who kept her warm and safe and dry. she would have liked to say she loved the man, but she didn’t like to lie”. dude. heavy. i know that my mom felt dissatisfied a lot of the time. and i know that this particular song helped her. helped her define her own particular brand of melancholia a bit. and here is the other part: as i recount this story to you, i understand only now, that as i sat next to her then in the front seat and was the sole observer of her taking in, singing along with and ultimately becoming a character in the song, that i was witnessing a sea change within my mother. a seedling of unhappiness, expressed in the very real emotional association with a song. the foreshadowing of a divorce from my father some 19 years in the making.
my point is that is NEVER too late. decide what to be and go be it. make 2010 your year. decisions, choices, whom to marry, whom to become, what to do with your time…it really is all up to you. “i said the years had been a friend to her…and that her eyes were still as blue, but in those eyes i wasn’t sure if i saw doubt or gratitude.” have the latter. gratitude. it’s an easy choice. look around you. be grateful. go forth. laugh. love. surrender to the Great Unknown. surrender to sappy, silly songs that make you remember what is you always wanted to be. or not be. do it. i will if you will. and 2010 will be our year. fast, furious and full of choices.
(dedicated to my mother.)
©littlebrownbutterfly
Well said Lisa!
To change ones life:
Do it flamboyantly.
Start immediately.
No Exceptions.
~William James
Wise words my friend. Let’s make 2010 the year we break through it all.
Hear Hear!