Sing on your Journey, but More So, the Post Journey
Doing things daily that are on your list of “perfect day ingredients” is the very definition of success. These are two on my list.
In Search of Perfect Days
My blog’s focus is rambling, some serious, some not so much, about what goes into being successful. This article fits the bill, although I’m not positive which side it’s on. The dictionary defines rambling as “proceeding without a specific goal, purpose, or direction. The following has all three of those, with conclusions that are hard to come by. After all, that’s life – days where we have a clear path and others spent meandering about.
An example of the constant battle between the clear days, the peaks, and the wandering ones, the valleys, is the following morning occurrences. First, I love music, most genres, and it’s on my list of ingredients that go into a perfect day. It helps me to reflect on life's past, present, and future because great songwriters say things in ways that clarify existence and mood. Music helps me better understand life and provides worldly and self-reflection. A verse can bring me to a happy, thoughtful, and sentimental place and ignites innovation, peace, consciousness, creativity, and encouragement. Additionally, stirring words can put me in a meditative state, where I can exit myself, and health experts advocate mediation to no end, so music benefits my well-being.
So most days I wake with song lyrics running in my head. For example:
Aging myself big time here with these songs, but I get good vibes on the days I wake up with the lyrics,
“Stood there boldly, sweatin in the sun,
Felt like a million, felt like number one”
The Bob Seger tune (Like a Rock). They remind me of how I felt after my 1984 season, my one glory days season in the Show, and I sense a productive day will follow.
On the other hand, I cringe a little and am leery of the days I wake with Midnight Train to Georgia and the words,
“LA proved too much for the man,”
Those words sting as they remind me of my Dodger Days, which were not my finest and a subsequent trade from the Hollywood world was not far away in 1981.
Perfection Doesn’t Exist
Such is life, a collection of great and not-so-fine memories. All of this gets me to what got me thinking about music and life. I was reminded of the importance of how we look at things by iconic musician Neil Young. When he addressed the passing of former bandmate, and also iconic, David Crosby, Neil said, “I remember the best times.” He inferred that he chose to recall only the peaks over the many valleys in their relationships and time together.
This brings me to another key ingredient on the success trail of life - enjoying the post journey, day by day, by choosing to remember the good times, while trying to toss the bad times to the side of the road. That is not easy, especially when loss and heartache are involved but beneficial to well-being also. It’s critical to live and love in the moment, by focusing on the “highlights” even when they are few and far between. It’s a lesson I need to heed more as I often think of the negative moments in my past and especially with relationships. Too often I can’t seem to get past when someone let me down, or when I did the dropping. Either way regrets formed, and holding on to them for long is not the way to go.
I must realize those are a part of life as well and I have the option to tune them out and think of the best times with others. I need to be better at accepting that I and others are human and toss away the negatives because – “that’s life, and perfection is impossible for myself and others. I must learn to live with that realization. I suppose it’s one reason I feel more comfortable around younger people (kids) than adults – I trust kids will not let me down, and if they do, “Well, they are just kids,” so it’s understandable.
I guess the message here is to unfreeze the negatives from my mind and “Let it go,” knowing that “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” and that may be for U2 and that’s the way it should be. But, most importantly, when looking back, choose to remember the good times.
