Yesterday

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

*******

Dear Kate,

You like to talk.  Legend has it that you could talk for hours on end, your listener willy-nilly.  What does it do for you then, if no one is truly listening, for you to speak those words and send them into thin air?  You said it's been a thing for you since you were young: now if there's therapeutic value in it, how has your healing been? 

I was talking to a friend yesterday, about a conversation he had with his friend in HK the night before.  This friend of his is a true success, buying up properties all over the world, and he sent my friend a Whatsapp sticker yesterday, which my friend found truthful, and thus helpful.  The sticker says: If it is yours, it will finally be; if not, don't lose sleep over it.

I replied, also via text--which is a great way to have a thoughtful conversation, to give each other the time and space to digest and compose oneself, especially when the topic is heated, not necessarily by disagreement, but for the sheer combustibility of the matter.  I said, not in so many words, much more artful in my actually utterance, that Nothing is finally ours, if we are willing to face the futility of life.

"For whoever wants to save their life will lose it..."  I gave this as my reply to the sticker, and a few more words to send my friend back to the Bible for the rest.  My friend used to go to church.  He said he agreed, that such is how he experienced life so far.  He said he will open his Bible again; I didn't ask him to.

There are many songs about yesterday, good, famous songs, songs that three generations sitting down together could sing in unison without looking up the words.  You are probably humming the best known of them all already, from the Beatles.  And how about "All by Myself," a song all about yesterday without saying the word?  Like anthems they are re-traditioned by generations after the words were first spoken, human regrets that would never go away.  Like death.  (Or is it death itself?)

The song I shared with you above, though, is the yesterday song to answer to all the yesterday songs.  Or more like to question them.  Read the lines I quoted above.

What is really lamentable, the passing of yesterday, or how we let it pass?  We say we are pained--but by what?  Could it be by how we refuse to see pains, the crucifixion before the resurrection that we think should finally be magically ours--and to keep forever?  We run---you love to run, and what for?  From where, to where?  Can you stop running for a moment, stop saying so much but only answer to this: What is life all about?  Can we bring ourselves to admit to this, three generations sitting down together, reciting common regrets, aspiring to broken dreams, that our every conversation concerns itself with each of our Me, and nothing else at all?

Who am I, yesterday, today, tomorrow?  Even the "king" who had it all needed to ask the question.

Yours, Alex