Ever since I first wrote this signature post for my blog I have had the pleasure of learning so much more and meeting so many new people through my blog and social media. So I wanted to repost it for those new and wonderful people that have become so supportive of my writing. Thanks guys, you know who you are.
Plans didn’t work out at all like they were supposed to.
They worked out so much better though.
The reason I believe that the outcome was so positive is because I didn’t sweat the situation, and just went with it. Sometimes people don’t have control of their workday and they can’t show up. I have been there.
I opened myself up to opportunity and reconnected with a friend I hadn’t seen in years and had a great meal and just enjoyed my night.
Why am I writing this? The message here is simple. Smile, accept life as it comes. Fighting it by getting mad and creating a drama, just prevents the opportunity to have another adventure.
I named my blog Who Knew? almost exactly one year ago. I had no idea how aptly I had titled the blog and as a year passes it reinforces within me a certain innate ability to honestly say “I have no idea what the future holds.”
I am someone who lives in the day, which has it’s distinct positives i.e. I am very spontaneous and most of my travels have occurred very spur of the moment, and it’s devastating drawbacks. It is who I am however and I make no apologies or excuses, it is how I live.
Things tend to come full circle in life so this post features a song called Everybody Knows by a legendary performer Leonard Cohen.
Cohen rose to the opportunity this audience represented by releasing two consecutive albums, I’m Your Man (1988) and The Future (1992), that not only rank among the finest of his career, but that perfectly capture the texture of particularly complicated times. Cohen had long documented the high rate of casualties in the love wars, so the profound anxieties generated by the AIDS crisis were no news to him. Songs like “Ain’t No Cure for Love,” the wryly titled “I’m Your Man” and, most explicitly, “Everybody Knows” (“Everybody knows that the Plague is coming/Everybody knows that it’s moving fast/Everybody knows that the naked man and woman – just a shining artifact of the past”) depict Cohen surveying the contemporary erotic battleground and reporting on it with characteristic perspective, insight and wisdom.
I first heard the song in a movie called “Pump Up The Volume” in 1990 and it was performed by the band Concrete Blonde. Later I learned it’s origins and became a Leonard Cohen fan. It came at a time when everything was changing, I was going off to college and my senior year in high school was marked by a clinical depression which almost prevented me from going off to University. Thankfully I was able to get through it and I remember listening to this song on repeat in my car almost compulsively. I think it quite fits the brooding and scared teen I had become for the song is not very hopeful, and in many ways very true.
So here I am 17 years and half a lifetime later posting my first post-hiatus entry into this blog. Who Knew? the poem I wrote asks many questions. Everybody Knows offers many answers, some all too true and others can be debated. I know though that it evokes for me a great deal of truth, some fear and it does so in a very poetic fashion. Leonard Cohen wrote what he knew. I say who knows?
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you’ve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Sometimes I get really sentimental, and this is what happens. So here is me, in a mood rarely shared. I usually escape into my world and listen to whatever makes me feel like this, today I felt like it was time to share it with others. Maybe we are all gamblers, just trying to make it through the hand we are dealt. The lyrics in this song apply to so many things (the chorus specifically) in life. But I would rather be a gambler, then sit by and watch the others play.
When our fore father’s were writing what would become one of the most important and controversial documents framing societal mores so to speak, they obviously believed that “happiness” was an important factor by including;
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” one of the most famous phrases in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and seen as part of the Bill of Rights, namely, these three aspects are listed among the “inalienable rights” of man.
It seems in this time of political turmoil, an ongoing war in Iraq and the economy stressing out just about everyone, the subject of “happiness” is being discussed and dissected more than ever.
The British BBC television kicked off a six part series on the subject this week;
“The series looks at the newest research from around the world to find out what could it be that makes us happy.
We all want to be happy but the problem has always been that you can’t measure happiness.
Happiness has always been seen as too vague a concept, as Lord Layard, Professor of Economics at the LSE and author of “Happiness – lessons from a new science” points out.
“There is a problem with the word happiness.
“When you use the word happy, it often has the sort of context of balloons floating up into the sky or something frivolous.”
Now scientists say they can actually measure happiness.
Neuro-scientists are measuring pleasure. They suggest that happiness is more than a vague concept or mood; it is real. “
Clearly “happiness”, it’s meaning and importance differs individually. The following are some fascinating and revealing quotes about the subject from writer’s, philosophers and other colorful characters I found worth sharing:
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. ~Franz Kafka
If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time. ~Edith Wharton
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky
This is my “depressed stance.” When you’re depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you’ll start to feel better. If you’re going to get any joy out of being depressed, you’ve got to stand like this. ~Charlie Brown
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~Camus
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.~Carl Jung .
Obviously there are divergent views of the concept of “happiness.” The song below is my own way of perhaps mocking the idea as well as sharing a great tune. There is a great deal of controversy over what the song means. Some claim it represents heroine, others say it refers to homo-erotocism, and a bevy of other theories. I won’t even pretend to know what was meant by the song, but for me it is one more brilliant contribution from the Beatles both musically and philosophically.
The Beatles – Happiness is a Warm Gun
It seems to me that we are so busy worrying about “happiness” and attaining it that perhaps we are missing the point all together. With that said, I want to know what “happiness,” the word or idea mean to you? Are you happy? Do you care? Either way, feel free to share your thoughts, I look forward to exploring this further and maybe even learning something about myself in the process. Have a “happy” day.
