Yesterday Once More

 

Yesterday when I was young

The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame
The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned
I always built to last on weak and shifting sand
I lived by night and shunned the naked light of the day
And only now I see how the years ran away

Yesterday when I was young
So many happy songs were waiting to be sung
So many wild pleasures lay in store for me
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see
I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out
I never stopped to think what life was all about
And every conversation I can now recall
Concerned itself with me and nothing else at all

Yesterday the moon was blue
And every crazy day brought something new to do
I used my magic age as if it were a wand
And never saw the waste and the emptiness beyond
The game of love I played with arrogance and pride
And every flame I lit too quickly, quickly died
The friends I made all seemed somehow to drift away
And only I am left on stage to end the play

There are so many songs in me that won't be sung
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue
The time has come for me to pay
For yesterday when I was young

***********

Dear Kate,

Same song today I shared, as you can see/hear.  According to Billboard, there are more than 90 versions of the song recorded before 1972.  It is fair to call it a national anthem.

The "pursuit of Happiness," with a capital H, was declared an "unalienable Right" by the people of your nation, the greatest nation of all, which stands alongside another two also capitalized Rights: Life and Liberty.

This sounds about...right.  The assumption is, as human beings, we know what we want, we know what makes us happy.  If we don't know yet, we should be given the time and space of at least our entire life time to work that out, as much freedom as we can possibly be granted to pursue the "American dream."

Look around you, everything is flourishing thanks to the Founding Fathers declaring such "self-evident truths."  Look beneath you, everything is dying because the children actually think such truths are self-evident.

Is it "self-evident" to you, why so many otherwise educated, intelligent, loving people with many friends and families, would refuse to wear a mask?  It's soooooostupid, I've heard many people say, people who are also otherwise educated, intelligent, and loving, but not not-stupid enough to see why others are so self-evidently stupid.  Everybody's trying to be happy and pursuing life finite to that end: who are you to say you know what makes me happy?  What is the role of a government?  To enable me to be happy.  What is the use of an education?  To empower me to be happy.  What is the function of a family, the proper purpose of my parents?  To allow me to be happy--which, of course, would mean to unburden me of any unnecessary pain.  (And no pain is ever "necessary" if you can work hard enough to buy your way out of it.)

When the stupid convictions are ours, we declare them truths too self-evident to be questioned.  Say, the "pursuit of Happiness," something we don't need to talk about daily in so many exact words because it is a self-evident, living assumption of how things (should) work.  Am I losing you already?  Are you not too sure what I am talking about?  Go right to your kitchen, open the door of your fridge, knock on the beautiful hardwood floor under you, marvel at the lights above you showering hope over your peaceful sanctuary, the warm of heatwave that you know not its path, the flow of water fresh and air clean to suit your conscience---everything, literally EVERYTHING, is there to make you happy.

Yet what drives us everyday is the burning thought that nothing is ever good enough, that goodness, really, is not so much self-evident as self-made.  That's why we need to pursue happiness.  Our Right to pursue it may be "self-evident" (which is a dubious enough assumption), but whether we will realize the "full potential," be the "best version" of ourselves is a matter of us chasing after our Dream, cashing in the Promise.

Which brings us back to the song.  The same song we will forever sing, all 90 days of every season, about how "there are so many songs in [us] that won't be sung."  There are songs, yearnings in us, that we will never let them be sung, echoes in the air exiled to the wind, because they speak about "pain [our] dazzled eyes refused to see."

Can a person be truly happy without facing what makes her sad?  What sort of story is it to have a hero who knows not even what is at stake?

A lover who wants only you and nothing else is a lover out to kill you.

Well, that's how we love ourselves.

Yours, Alex