Alexandersmap

    Tag: Paul Simon

    • Wrestling Back a Life

      And, I know a woman
      Became a wife
      These are the very words she uses to describe her life
      She said, “A good day
      Ain’t got no rain”
      She said, “A bad day’s when I lie in bed
      And think of things that might have been
      — Paul Simon, Slip Slidin’ Away

      When we get busy with life—the kind of busy that compresses each day into small wins amongst the incremental progress, we feel the time slipping away. Time moves the same, we just fill it differently. Put a lot into it and it flies along quite rapidly. Leave it empty and purposeless and it seems to drag on forever. There’s some balance to be found there somewhere.

      Lately, my own days are filled to the brim. I wanted this for myself, I repeatedly say each day when I put my feet on the floor and stand for another go at life. Fill the day; keep regret at bay. We must wrestle back a life of purpose from the chaos of the world that would steal our time and distract us from the beautiful work yet to be done.

      We owe it to ourselves to live a life of awareness, and with that clarity reach for a higher standard for ourselves in the things that mean the most for us. Arete, or personal excellence, will be forever just out of reach, and yet we may get closer with each day filled with purposeful action. The time will slip and slide away in any case, but we may mitigate the might have beens.

    • Nothing Is Different, but Everything’s Changed

      I figure that once upon a time, I was an ocean
      But now I’m a mountain range
      Something unstoppable set into motion
      Nothing is different, but everything’s changed
      — Paul Simon, Once Upon A Time There Was An Ocean

      We know everything has changed, it was always going to be so. Technology brought us here, to this place where people are so spun up and separated by what the voices on their screens are telling them. The media we choose to consume drives and divides us.

      Yes, everything has changed, and it cannot be ignored. It’s always been this way, it always will be so. Change happens, like a rogue wave washing over an island of tranquility, washing away all that was comfortable and familiar for us. The stories change, but humans have always been this way. It was hopeful to believe we’d all changed, but all we were doing was looking in a different direction while the people angry with the change we embraced gathered strength. We live on a pendulum of action and reaction, swinging one way to the next. Knowing this, we must hold on tight and work for what is right.

      And still, we also must continue to focus on things that bring growth to our own dreams. To keep climbing towards personal excellence, even when the world doesn’t feel all that excellent at the moment. We were born at this time and place, and really, it’s been a lucky break for many of us. But not all of us. So we ought to count our blessings as we rise to meet each day, and not be ungrateful for the gifts we’ve received. Use them as tools to build. Use them to climb higher. Not all change is in our control, but some change surely is.

    • There But For The Grace Of You Go I

      “And as I watch the drops of rain
      Weave their weary paths and die
      I know that I am like the rain
      There but for the grace of you go I”
      – Simon & Garfunkel, Kathy’s Song

      These lyrics were highlighted for me by a young lady I met when I was 19 and figuring things out.  I’ve never forgotten them, though I haven’t spoke to her in years.  She married a friend of mine.  I don’t recall being invited to their wedding.  So it goes.  The lyrics remain with me, even if the person that brought them to me is a distant memory.  But isn’t that the way with so many moments in our lives?  People punctuate the moment, and then they’re on to other things, or maybe you are.  Life is a series of such moments built on one another.  I have the entire soundtrack of Simon & Garfunkel’s greatest hits permanently engrained in my brain from a constant cycle of flipping the cassette tape back when people bought cassette tapes.  Sure, everyone knows Mrs. Robinson and Bridge Over Troubled Water and The Sounds of Silence.  All classics.  but deep into the night when everyone else was sleeping I carried on with The Boxer, America and Kathy’s Song.  Years later, they remain my highlights in the Simon & Garfunkel catalog.

      Kathy’s Song was the one that seized my attention and truthfully hasn’t let go, beginning with the lyrics:

      “And a song I was writing is left undone
      I don’t know why I spend my time
      Writing songs I can’t believe
      With words that tear and strain to rhyme”

      Damn it Paul, I know how you feel.  We all work on things we can’t believe, that tear us apart inside.  I’m with you now…  and he doubles down with with the next verse:

      “And so you see I have come to doubt
      All that I once held as true
      I stand alone without beliefs
      The only truth I know is you”

      Followed by “And as I watch the drops of rain” and the rest, ending in perfection with There but for the grace of you go I... And I’ve been trying to write a line as beautiful as that ever since.  I was a teenager when the song was brought to my attention by an old soul in a young body passing through my life.  People come and go in our lives, but sometimes as they pass through they plant a little seed that takes root in our soul.