Finding Sunlight in Song
This week, I’ve been thinking of something that happened in my childhood.
When I was young, probably around age seven, there were two younger friends in our neighborhood, probably both around age five, who used to fight–a lot.
For a short period of time, I’m not sure why, I became their go-to person to settle things.
They would knock on our front door, and I would come out onto the porch, at which time they would pummel me with their stories about why the other person was so awful, and all the things they each had done to wrong the other.
This was serious business. Hair pulling and scratching was involved.
At first, I really had no clue what to do. I listened to their rants and raves, got real serious, took a minute to think things over, then put one hand on each of their heads and bonked their heads together (lightly, no one got hurt!).
The first time, I caught them off-guard (and I think myself too) and they burst into fits of giggles. And so they came back a few more times for my “help.”
I’ll never forget the time my bonk-their-heads-together trick didn’t work. They turned to me angrily in a huff and stalked off, now mad at me as well.
Sometimes bumping heads can remind us that we really love each other, and a fight doesn’t have to be quite so vicious.
Most times, however, it takes a lot more than that for us to get over our pain and come up with a real strategy for figuring out how to help make the fighting stop.
As I’ve been watching tensions rise around current events lately, I’ve been thinking most of us are better at escalating energies (if not with each other, then in our own minds) when faced with differences of perceptions rather than to de-escalating them.
How do we navigate that tricky balance between staying true to ourselves while also holding space for others to feel heard and held?
What This Has To Do With Alanis Morissette
This past weekend, a friend sent me a YouTube clip of Alanis Morissette’s new song about motherhood Ablaze.
Boy, do I love her lyrics. This line in particular: “My mission is to keep the light in your eyes ablaze” really sums it all up, doesn’t it?
When I get really triggered about something with someone I care about, it helps when I remember how much I love the other person. Other times, it’s more complicated.
I love the video of Alanis Morissette performing this song with her daughter on her lap for Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show. I love it because as a mom, I can completely relate to juggling two things at once. (It since has been taken off the internet, but this story gives you the flavor of it–she was so patient and calm, it was absolutely beautiful.)
After taking an eight-year break since creating her last album, that performance was a big moment for her personally and professionally. And yet, behind all that is the fact that the song is about her kids, and how unbreakable her love is for them. I can imagine what it must have taken for her to hold the space for her child, whom the song is about, and herself, as she sang it on live television as part of her comeback publicity tour.
How do we do that, stand strong for ourselves, our own agenda and our own goals without abandoning ourselves, and also hold space for others?
How do we protect our own energy and focus, while allowing space and not shaming or hurting others whom may be flirting with pulling our energy away from where we want or need it to be? This is tricky business.
When A Bonk On The Head Doesn’t Work
So, back to my sweet angry five-year old friends and that time when bonking their heads together didn’t work so well.
After I recovered from my astonishment, left there alone on the porch feeling stupid for bonking their heads together one too many times, and having it revealed that I was not the great problem-solver they thought I was, I started wondering.
Were they okay? Did they figure things out for themselves? Was the fight about something really important, too important to be brushed under the carpet or laughed off?
As I look back now, I realize that even though the fight wasn’t resolved in that moment, those two kids were pretty resourceful for five-year-olds. They had acknowledged they were in conflict and didn’t want to be. They knew they were in over their head and needed help. They had also paused the fight, even if temporarily, to walk side by side, all the way from their houses to mine. That must have taken a lot.
Sometimes stepping back and taking a break isn’t the solution, but it is a path to de-escalating passions enough to start trying to figure it out for ourselves, through trial and error, struggling with failures and truths, hurts and pain.
Back to Alanis
Something I really respect about Alanis Morissette is her album Jagged Little Pill, in which she sang angrily and honestly about how she had been mistreated and exactly how, in no uncertain terms, it made her feel.
While she had her share of critics who were uncomfortable with her raw authenticity, others who had experienced similar emotions celebrated the fact that she had the courage to reveal what so many others had also felt, and what so often went unsaid. Also on that album were these lyrics:
“All I really want is some peace man
A place to find a common ground
And all I really want is a wavelength
All I really want is some comfort
A way to get my hands untied
And all I really want is some justice”
-Alanis Morissette, All I Really Want, Jagged Little Pill
I think most of us have the same feeling of wanting some peace right about now. Our life journeys are messy and complicated, but through the living we gain great wisdom. Here’s the wisdom Alanis offers us as a result of her journey since her last album:
“This cord is unbreakable
This pilot light is there in your pocket
And this bond, beyond unshakeable
Even if we all forget
All at the same time
If we forget at the same time”
–Alanis Morissette, Ablaze, Such Pretty Forks In The Road (full song here)
None of us really know how to do this, exactly. At the end, I think it comes from remembering that as humans no matter how much we don’t agree, we are all connected, and perhaps our mission is, as Alanis sings, “to keep the light” in our own and each others’ “eyes ablaze.”
(P.S. This week, I actually went to a grocery store! We’ve pretty much been ordering our groceries by Instacart since SIP started in March. One of the perks was that I got to buy myself a big bouquet of sunflowers, my all-time favorite flower. Today’s photo is from that bouquet. Enjoy!)