Day 1: Favorite Song

I fell across this album while doing an internet search for another indie band (The New Pornographers) and at first dismissed it altogether. If anyone vaguely remembers them amidst the mid 90's grunge and pop-rock music scene you would have fled the album as I did because we all know how absolutely horrid their one hit 90's wonder "Popular" was. Re-forgetting it as I type this.

It just so happened, that day in particular, life really wanted me to rediscover this band because as I settled myself into a music mix made by Pandora, they immediately came up. This time around , I was listening. They, in a musical instant, grabbed my attention with their words and layered vocal melodies that came from a complex song with a simple message:

Too often in life we misunderstand each other and never stop to ask why. Instead, we "react and act on the wrong clues thinking there is time to re-do and re-do". We are only here in life for a fleeting moment in the grand scheme of things in body, so we have to make the most of what we do and say because in the end our mark is permanent as small as we think it will be.

Nada Surf - See These Bones 

Everyone's right and no one is sorry
That's the start and the end of this story
From the sharks and the jets
To the call in the morning

Everyone's right and no one is sorry
That's the start and the end of this story
From the sharks and the jets
To the call in the morning
And life is just bets anyway

Look alive, see these bones
What you are now, we were once

Try as they might, no one's immune to
Misfiring and acting on the wrong clues
And thinkin' there's time to redo and redo

I feel rain in the movies and the talk before the screen lights
I hear strings in the park
I don't like to call her right, except when its too late at night
I mostly just think in the dark

Look alive, see these bones
What you are now, we were once
Just like we are, you'll be dust
And just like we are, permanent

You were too tired to eat, too hungry to sleep
Just imagine the speed, it's just what you need

Look alive, see these bones
What you are now, we were once
And just like we are, you'll be dust
And just like we are, permanent

The lights in the city are more or less blinking
Which side of the story decides what you're thinking
Warm arms and cold faces
We're squinting, we're hurrying
We take inventory
We're digging, we're burying it

Do you remember when the light was low
Do you remember when it fell
Do you remember when you went to her house, remember ringing the bell

Look alive, see these bones
What you are now, we were once
Just like we are, you'll be dust
Just like we are, permanent

It is not easy for me to admit that in life I have felt a lot of times that I was the one who was reacting and acting on the wrong cues, that I wasn't able to understand the true meanings of what people were trying to tell me most of the time. They were the Sharks and I was the Jets and we were constantly battling each other because neither one wanted to stop to understand one another.

I realize now that my time here is so limited and if I let all the misunderstandings pile up then my mark on this tiny spinning mass of matter will not be one that can grow once I am gone. I have learned through this small self-revelation to now stop and ask, listen, and explain because learning to admit you are wrong or that you don't understand only makes you real. If no one is right and I am never sorry for the things that I say or do then I have stopped growing as a person and I just don't intend on my story ending there.