I find that I make so many decisions every day based on how I feel. Like “I don’t feel up to exercise today” or “I’m going to play the game on my iPhone because I deserve a break” or “I better get this done because if I don’t there’s gonna be trouble.” Those all seem rational, but notice that there are judgments in those statements, based on some kind of feeling. I’m trying to avoid uncomfortable experiences, taking the easier, more comfortable way out. Even the last statement, which seems sensible, may be a give-in to some kind of pressure, over doing something more meaningful. It may be driven by fear.
Amp that sort of rhetoric up and you start to feel your life spin out of control. Do you ever feel like you are flung left and right by the whim of some uncontrollable, random, merciless child? I have this image of being a tiny bug, like an ant, hanging on for dear life to the toy that a toddler is swinging around. It feels chaotic, scary and uncomfortable. One moment I’m trying not to get tossed off upward, another I’m trying not to get crushed.
The thing that I notice in this picture is that it’s hard to remember what it’s like to be peaceful. It’s hard to remember what it’s like not to expend all my willpower just trying to hang on. You live from moment to moment, as if they are disjointed, disconnected, no-rhyme-or-reason series of one crisis or another.
If you find yourself relating to any of the above, then I was thinking of you when I wrote my song “Can You Love a Landmine?” It’s about the personality change that occurs from your suffering. The drama gets so bad that you’re making up ways to survive each episode. Some days you’re gloomy and apathetic. Another day you’re forcefully bubbly, sweet and chattery. You’re just trying to put on an act that you think will keep you out of trouble in each crises. But you’re starting to lose sight of that common thread runs through — the experience of being you, being who you really are. Everything is an act and you don’t even realize that you’re putting it on.
I want you to know that you are not alone. I may not know you but if we connected somehow, if you allow yourself to show even a tiny opening in your guard, I can probably feel your pain. I know that thought doesn’t change anything, doesn’t offer any solutions.
But it is better than suffering alone. My experience is that emotional connection does give you a boost. When you feel that your honest emotions of suffering and hardship are received and accepted, it does change something. I’m not promising it will happen with this song. But my desire is to create songs that do that to someone. Because a number of songs gave that gift to me.