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There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
Nothing ventured, nothing gained,
Here at the end of one more empty day; And tomorrow's always just the same: One more nothing on my resume. I can't keep up with never-ending lists of Stuff to do and folks to see, Time to use and things to be, oh Would you hurry up and slow down? You don't gotta change the world; You don't gotta be someone, Just gotta be yourself and love. My ambition's running wild, Here at the start of one more sleepless night; All the things I wish I'd tried, All these dreams to live before I die. I can't keep up with my own striving after Fantasies of epic deeds, Of great acclaim and living easy. Would you hurry up and slow down? You don't gotta change the world; You don't gotta be someone, Just gotta be yourself and love. Just gotta be yourself and Would you hurry up and slow down? You don't gotta change the world; You don't gotta be someone, Just gotta be yourself and love. Would you hurry up and slow down? You ain't gonna save the world; You don't gotta be someone, Just gotta be yourself and love. Performers: daniel couper - Vocals, Acoustic Guitars, Percussion Bets Couper - Harmony Vocals Chris Couper & Colin Jeffress - Keys James West - Electric Guitar Jason Hardy - Bass Guitar
Perhaps instead of quoting Emerson we should seek the more culturally relevant wisdom of Disney pop star Bella Thorne: "Don't try to impress people. Always be yourself!"
While good and true in essence, statements like these have become trite and platitudinous in Western popular culture, serving largely to give chronically bored people permission to be random and rebellious. You want to eat whipped cream on your PB&J? Do it. Don't let anything stand in your way. You want to play ukulele in a heavy metal band? Yes. Always. Express your true self. You want to wear mismatched shoes? You do you, my friend. It is the heartbeat of hipsterdom, the guiding precept of the cutting edge: Be yourself. But there is both something more and something less to Emerson's words than to this popular notion of the phrase, I think. Indeed, the permission to be oneself is a grace and a freedom to be celebrated, as so many cheery pop stars understand. But there is also something solemn in the mandate--a significant but subtle something we tend to miss. Emerson and Bella both begin with the same premise: Don't live your life based on someone else's standards or expectations. It is in determining what that means―what it demands, in fact―that these two philosophers diverge. Bella Thorne ends with an exclamation point, a happy mark foreshadowing many happy days ahead. Emerson, on the other hand, not at all denying the nourishing necessity of such a self-reliant lifestyle, still moves with haste to the metaphorical toiling and tilling required of those who wish to be fully themselves. This song bears a similar haste, a rather ironic anxiety that it might be too easily misinterpreted. Thus, the majority of the song is spent meditating on what being oneself does not look like, rather than on what it does. Being myself does not mean filling every day with resume-worthy accomplishments, with all the things that will impress or satisfy those around me. But neither is being myself about chasing down every dream that comes into my own head. Being myself means relinquishing even my own pre-conceived (and probably appropriated) notions of who I should be. I must be content with who I am in this moment, stripped of experiences and expectations, unmoored from my competence as well as my inadequacy. I must shed even the masks I've fashioned to hide me from myself. I must, in short, become completely vulnerable to myself, to the universe, and to God. This is not easy to achieve; and even when it is achieved in part, when my true self begins to be revealed, I hesitate for fear. What will I find inside? What then is left for me to be? I begin to feel almost too free. In this void within myself, as I begin to realize how poorly I know myself, how poorly I am myself, what remains for me to cling to? What will anchor me? Like dawn and dusk, an answer comes slowly, from afar off, perhaps, but evoking something of itself even within my inner emptiness: Love. But this answer does not put an end to these questions. Indeed, love is hardly an answer at all. Love is itself the question. Love is tension. Love is always beckoning us into unfamiliar territory, beckoning us to seek, to search, to yearn. Love is an invitation to a long and perilous adventure with only a very vague idea where we may be headed. And here is found the true grace of this be yourself, because grace, like love, is always the beginning of a journey. Grace is never cheap or easy. Grace must be grown into, even as we must learn to grow into our true selves. This is the grace Jean Valjean finds when he meets the bishop. He is first welcomed in for a night of shelter from the cold―a small grace in itself, and one that Valjean cannot even endure through the night. In the morning, when he is forcibly returned to the bishop's door, having stolen the poor priest's silverware, the convict is met with another grace, stronger and fiercer than the first. It is this second grace, this welcoming outward into freedom and mystery, that takes hold of Jean Valjean in such a way that he can never shake it free. Valjean, nineteen years a victim of his society, has been welcomed into a new world altogether, one in which everything that has hitherto defined him is washed away, and he must begin to discover himself anew. Thus begins Valjean's true quest, and thus begins our own. May we travel this road slowly and deliberately, filled with mindfulness and love.
The following are the notebook pages whereupon I first scribbled out the semblance of this song.
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This page is sort of a catch-all for the things that don't quite fit anywhere else, kind of like that "miscellaneous stuff" drawer in your kitchen. Some of it is definitely just junk. Some of it is incredibly precious. Hopefully, this blog―with its song stories and random ramblings and who knows what else―will contain more of the latter. Peace.
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