Below is a journal entry from a couple years ago. I have been wanting to share it but have also felt like a fool in doing so. There have been a couple things recently that have been keeping it on my mind.
First, Mike took me to see Howard Jones. This has been years coming I suppose. It would have been our first date back in 1987, if I had been allowed to go on dates. I was a good girl, obedient to a T. My parents said, “no”. I didn’t bat an eye and life went on. And even though I listened to Howard Jones on the radio, I never paid much attention to his lyrics or to the messages he was putting out into the world. Let’s just say that after attending the concert I was left in awe over him and his deep and meaningful song lyrics. I wouldn’t have understood back then, the way I do now. Thank goodness life comes in to wear you down and make you open your eyes.
The second reason is because I have been hearing a lot about a church youth Christian rock concert. This is amazing in ways. Especially after growing up in an LDS culture where we “worshipped” God in a more reverent and acceptable manner by not participating in “Christian Rock”. I remember well, all the many lessons about how Rock, especially Hard Rock music was being created by satanists trying to destroy God’s youth, trying to entice us to use drugs and to stray from the straight and narrow path. Of course, I believed that all of this was true.
May 27, 2021
Today as I was driving the kids to school, it was the last day of the year and now we’re coming up on summer break. This year is different, so different from last year and so different from all the years previous. But even though it’s different, it is nostalgic. It feels like going back in time, back to the 70’s when I was just a kid and all of life was just life. It was back when I didn’t project any outcomes on my experience, where I just lived and enjoyed each and every moment. No expectations, no trying to force anything into a seeming perfection so that it could be enjoyed. It was just living life as is and that was actually remarkable.
As we drove along, Tarena was playing music from her phone. I am often surprised and so pleased with the selections she makes, this goes for all of my kids. It is because of the incredible influence of their dad that they all have a genuine love and appreciation for music in all its forms. I have been the greatest recipient of seeing into the soul of each one of my children through their very thoughtful choices of music. It is amazing how different, yet how beautiful they each can be.
Tarena played the song “Forever Young” by Alphaville. As often happens with music, I was immediately drawn into another place and time, back to my high school days, to memories of friends and faces from so long ago. Yes, I could feel myself in high school again. I could reconnect with the “me” from the past and I could reminisce about it all. At the same time, I could think about the meanings that I interpret from my feelings and experience over all these years.
Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst
Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?
Forever Young by Alphaville
I had these thoughts of appreciation and gratitude for the gift of life, for the gift of being oneself, and for the gift of creating. I thought about my generation, about the things we thought and dreamed of. I thought of the expectations I had and of the disappointments I realized. I thought of the desires we all held.
I thought about the previous generations. My sisters’ generation and their music, their dreams, their expectations, their feelings and their contributions. It came out in their music. They seemed to be dreaming of a world united and whole, a world of peace.
They had grown up in a world consumed by what their parents had experienced, a world of war. But then, didn’t that generation also make a grand contribution. They were the heroes, the ones who sacrificed, the ones who fought for freedom, for peace, for their dreams and ultimately, for a better world. Is it not reflected in the songs that came after war?
My generation had to learn that peace isn’t an island unto itself. We dreamed of peace while living in fear of the next bomb, the catastrophic ending. We dreamed of peace but lived isolated from one another in an attempt to keep ourselves safe. At least, I lived this way. I believe we dreamed of peace but couldn’t experience it. We had our expectations. I had mine. Life brought me something else, life brought me lessons.
My sisters’ generation prophesied, they had hope for peace and they sang about it. They petitioned for it. They held movements and protests for the rights of women and for racial equality. They were not self-seeking, self-gratifying individuals. They were looking for a way to live in harmony.
And today, there is the next generation, my kids’ generation. Maybe their world will be different? Maybe they’ll create something new? Maybe they’ll live in peace and harmony with each other? Maybe they’ll know paradise?
It’s almost like we had to experience each thing, like one experience was the catalyst to the next, on and on. My sisters’ generation might not have cared much about peace, love and freedom, had it not been fought for so valiantly the generation before. And maybe we learned, didn’t we? Maybe we learned that war is not a means to an end, but a means to end, a means to end what isn’t yourself, or what doesn’t think, speak and act as you do.
As I grew up, I learned to “other” people. People that didn’t have the same beliefs, philosophies, or lifestyle as me were more than just different, they were “other”. I had this idea that somehow, I was better. I was taught that I was blessed and fortunate to have a better understanding and to know the truth.
Now I look and I can see that there were people that made a grand contribution to this world. No, they didn’t come to see the world as I do. They simply opened their mouths and said what they believed. They did it through music, through art, they did it through being themselves.
I think of the incredible contributions of artists like Elton John, John Lennon, Erasure, others, and Alphaville. How could these all speak love, tolerance and kindness in a world where I believed that I was of the chosen sect? What had I done to further the ideas of love, kindness and tolerance?
It is as if I am looking through the mirror from the wrong side. I was taught to see the world as dark, dreary, cracked and ready to be broken and cleansed. I was safe here, inside my little bubble, away from all the chaos and turmoil of the last days when that world through the glass would be annihilated.
But my world was the fake world.
As I step through the glass and come out into the open air, I see a world of wonder, a world of color, a world brimming with life and love and happiness. It is a world where all contributions, all walks of life, all understandings are unfolding to life that is. They are all working in concert to encourage and embrace the wholeness of living peacefully. It is a world where I don’t have to be right; a world where we can all be wrong together; a world where none of that matters anyway