These Are Days

I’m not prone to displays of emotion—public or private—which is why I was surprised to find myself welling up with tears at Target the other day. It wasn’t the diversity of 99 cent knickknacks or the intoxicating smell of buttered popcorn that got me going.

No, it was that song.

The pink elephant on the page

Some of you may be wondering where I have been for, oh, the past year or more. Experiencing recurrent emotional breakdowns at big box stores all over western Pennsylvania, perhaps?

No. I’ve been right here—same city, same job, same family—just living life, but not publishing my thoughts online. I’ve also been gutting and remodeling my new home (more on that below).

My last blog post was January 2018. After taking an unplanned break from writing for a few weeks after that, I wasn’t sure I would return to writing. Ever.

Blogging slowly morphed from enjoyable pastime into a distracting obligation. I couldn’t spend an hour or two each day on WordPress and still work and hang out with my family. Thus, dormant weeks became dormant months and dormant months became over a year.

But I’m here to write again, for now, without promise or expectation that I will do it regularly or that anyone will bother to read it. How’s that for a promotional message!

Meanwhile in the home goods section…

I won’t leave you in suspense; the song that evoked my unexpected wellspring of emotion was right there in the post title: “These Are Days” by 10,000 Maniacs.

It’s a danceable, upbeat tune which would not be out of place at the school dance on Dawson’s Creek. At the time of its release in 1992, I was 13 and obsessed with the adventures of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. My brothers and I watched a lot of MTV too, sometimes recording sweet VHS mix tapes! I became familiar enough with “These Are Days” from its heavy rotation that, even today, I could stumble through it at a karaoke bar.

Years later, the song popped into my life again at a moment of significance: my wedding. “These Are Days” was a favorite of a dear medical school friend, who requested it to the wedding singer. During a disorganized square dance which mutated into a large spinning circle of all our medical school friends—we were married the summer after school ended, and this was a last hurrah of sorts—quite a few of us had something in our eyes

Suffice to say the song held some emotional resonance for me before that fateful day in the towel aisle. But as I blithely began to sing along, the lyrics were so unexpectedly poignant and apropos I quite literally sat down to listen.

These are days you’ll remember
Never before and never since
I promise
Will the whole world be warm as this
And as you feel it
You’ll know it’s true
That you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you
Are touched by something
That will grow in you, in you

These are days you’ll remember
When May is rushing over you with desire
To be part of the miracles you see in every hour
You’ll know it’s true that you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you
Are touched by something
That will grow and bloom in you

These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break
These days you might feel a shaft of light
Make its way across your face
And when you do you’ll know how it was meant to be
See the signs and know their meaning
It’s true
You’ll know how it was meant to be
Hear the signs and know they’re speaking to you, to you

An older me, a new meaning

What do the lyrics mean? To me, the message simple and ancient: live in the moment. You only experience each moment once, and you should savor it. Life can be painfully beautiful if you take the time to observe it.

As to why the song had such an effect on me at that precise moment, that is not so simple.

First, the lyrics (and video) allude to the magic of childhood, of discovering life for the first time. As we age into adulthood, novel experiences become less and less common and—to save precious time and energy—our brains subconsciously categorize experiences into well-established mental models: “been there, done that.” A strawberry tastes like this; driving with the windows open feels like that. This is why vacations to exotic locations—new places, new people, new food—can be so exhilarating and reenergizing.

Many of us rediscover the magic of the world through our kids. Yet despite lovely and energetic young children, my world had lost some of its shine over the past couple years. How did I lose my way?

Home sweet home

From an outside perspective, my life couldn’t have been rosier: I was young (40 is still young, damnit), healthy, wealthy by almost any measure, and had a beautiful wife and children whom I love.

But near the end of 2017, we purchased a (much larger) house and proceeded to completely gut and remodel it. As of May 2019, the project is not yet complete. If you’ve ever done something similar, you will empathize with the stress and mess of such an undertaking. As most home remodeling projects go, ours went over schedule and over budget, to the detriment of planned retirement and college savings over the past 18 months.

And in the middle of all this, we sold our old home and moved into a construction zone.

Only recently can I reflect on the past 18 months with levity and see how, at times, I allowed setbacks and difficult decisions—which were trivial in the grand scheme of life—to consume my attention and occasional ire. As I absorbed the meaning of those lyrics, I was ashamed of my misguided self pity: Is life really that bad? Can’t you see the good and beauty that is right in front of you?

My children were experiencing the wonders of the world for the first time, and I was missing it, lost in the concerns of “adulting.” My agonizing over tile and grout choices was a thief, stealing those small moments with small children that only happen once. I was as much saddened that I was missing it as I was frustrated that I could not snap myself out of it.

Sea change

After a sudden moment of insight, we often ask ourselves: Why did this realization take so long? Why, in my case, did it take an alt-folk-rock song from the 90s to cut through the haze of the past year and a half?

I don’t think there is anything special or unique about that particular song. Plenty of other songs—not to mention movies, philosophies, and religions—have for time immemorial espoused the virtue of “living in the moment.”

But sometimes the stars of meaning align, and a single thing—a song, a painting, a mountain—can change everything. Our conscious and unconscious thoughts can coalesce around it and create that wow moment. It just so happened that this song caught me in the right moment and the right state of mind, and I knew the lyrics.

But that’s not all…

To recap my lesson of the day: live in the present, doofus. Like the song says, “feel a shaft of light make its way across your face.”

But Natalie Merchant’s vibrato was the gift that kept on giving, and as the song continued I began to ponder other problematic mental states.

The mind is often at war—a mental tug-of-war, akin to a virtuous angel and villainous devil whispering in each ear. But rather than this archetypal internal battle of good versus evil, some of my recent struggles could be compared to a battle of logic versus emotion.

Prehistoric man no doubt wrestled with similar decisions: between collecting kindling for the night’s fire—obeying his logical bents—or making out all afternoon with Zuna in the hot spring—listening to his heart. In more recent history, none other than Mr. Philosophy Mustache, Friedrich Nietzsche, contributed his two cents to this struggle.

Apollo and Dionysus

Nietzsche is a polarizing fellow. I gather he led a fairly miserable life and was kind of a dick (ref.?). Few, however, would contend that his ideas are boring or uninfluential.

In his book The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche introduces the concept of Apollonian and Dionysian worldviews. Apollo was the Greek god of the sun, the light, the music, and the prophecy (overachiever!); Dionysus, the god of wine and the grape harvest (paaaarty!).

Nietzsche used the mythology of these semi-opposite gods to illustrate the battle between man’s logical and emotional sides. (He kind of did this, I think. Actually I didn’t read the book.)

The Apollonian side of our character is rational and analytic—a Spock-like worldview; it champions individuality and introspection. Our Dionysian side embraces enthusiasm and ecstasy (um, god of wine), and encourages oneness with the whole of humanity, nature, and the universe—a loss of individuality. Music is the epitome of the Dionysian: it emphasizes chaotic (or non-) thinking, and surrender to the emotions.

We have a bit of Apollo and Dionysus in each of us. One whose nature leans too much toward one or the other will have a difficult, or at least unbalanced, life.

To be sure, my default mode is Apollonian—structured, rational, analytic—most of the time. Presented with a challenge, I relieve stress by analyzing the problem and focusing on a solution. Becoming a parent had rekindled my Dionysian side a bit (including more wine), but it is easy to fall back into the well-worn, Apollonian mental ruts that I’ve been running in my whole life. In short, I suffered from too much analyzing and not enough dancing.

What is the right balance between the Apollonian and Dionysian; between the mind and the heart? Who knows.

How did I pop out my Apollonian rut? If this mental jump were easy, everyone would be happier. All I know for sure is that, for some reason, a song helped me this time.

Will I relapse into my old ways at some point? Almost certainly. When that happens, maybe Sarah McLachlan can help me next time.

In Conclusion?

I’m unsure if this comes across on the page, but to me this has felt like a rambling, stream-of-consciousness, and emotional post—anathema to my Apollonian nature. How shall we wrap it up? Why not add to the schmaltz and discuss the meaning of life.

The pursuit of worthwhile goals can certainly give life meaning, but life itself is not merely a series of hurdles to jump and peaks to climb. When you achieve those hard-earned goals, what next?

I’ll answer that with an excerpt from Alan Watts’ monologue about life and music. Given the musical impetus for this post, it seems a fitting conclusion.

One doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition… We thought of life by analogy with a journey…which had a serious purpose at the end… success…or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing — and you were supposed to sing, or dance, while the music was being played.

So stop and listen to a song, or read some poetry, or meditate on a mountaintop. Hug your kids or parents or significant others or pets. Add a little Dionysus to your life.

There’s no time like the present.