Just Give It Time (Jon McLaughlin Lyrics)

Just Give It Time
Jon McLaughlin
(from: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jonmclaughlin/justgiveittime.html)

Still waters, heavy hearts
Plans we make all fall apart
Disillusioned and lost in the gray
How can we fix the heart when it breaks?
Don't know how much more you can take

[Chorus:]
Just give it time
It's gonna get better
Now is not forever at all
Just give it time
Everything changes
Tomorrow comes today will be gone
Everything's gonna be fine
Just give it time, give it time

Quiet landslide when nobody knows
Regretted decisions that nobody chose
Under water and sinking fast
No way out, no way to get back
What might have been is lost in the past

[Chorus]

When the world you're in is still again
And it all fades out
You've reached the end, begin again now

[Chorus]

[2x]
Everything's gonna be alright
Everything's gonna be alright
Just give it time 

 

 

So who hasn't heard someone say that things are going to get better? Somehow Jon McLaughlin makes it believable when it doesn't always feel like it.

To giving it time.

So Much Happiness by Naomi Shihab Nye

 http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/so-much-happiness/

So Much Happiness

Naomi Shihab Nye

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…..
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.


I haven't posted a poem in a while, so here's one I read a while ago. I think Nye does a wonderful job of writing about how happiness feels, as much as you can explain it, anyway: how it "floats," then "lands on the roof of the next house," and "flows out of you into everything you touch." Isn't that so absolutely true?

Because it's an extra-special day (why not?), here's another quote:
"Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”
-Naomi Shihab Nye
(found here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/naomi-shihab-nye)

To happiness flowing out of us into the world around us, and seeing the shimmering.

Thoughts on The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)

This is the book description, taken straight off of Amazon:

With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.
Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the NEW YORK TIMES. McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best.

I think it's beautifully written, and McCullers covers such a wide range of topics masterfully - family dynamics, friendship, loneliness, isolation, politics, racism, etc. When I was reading, I felt like I was really there. I could almost see Mick's face when she was listening to the radio, feel how intensely lonely Singer was without Antonapoulos, sense how much Benedict worked for the "strong true purpose" and oh, man, there are a few shockers in this book that definitely make you read on!

Perhaps what stood out to me the most is the sense of isolation in this small town. John Singer is a a mute who Mick, Jake and Benedict all feel understand them in a way that no one else can. He listens to them talk at length and they put him on a pedestal, see him as incredibly wise man of great understanding. 

Isn't there something sad about the fact that they believe Singer understands them in a way that no one else does when Singer is unable to talk back? Granted, he is able to respond - he can write, and he does at several points - but mostly, he just listens.

It's sad and yet there's something hopeful (maybe even redemptive) about it, I think. I've been going back and forth in my head about whether this is a reason for optimism or pessimism, that the characters feel less isolated when they talk to Singer when it could be seen as them isolating themselves even further - they're confiding to someone who can't - or rather, doesn't - fully participate as an equal in the conversation. Furthermore, while the three people feel so understood by Singer...they never really ask him about himself. They may worship him, but they only see him as the listener. Though they may be curious about his life, they don't ask about his innermost feelings and such. They are interested in Singer mainly because he plays the role of good listener.

Who listens to Singer? Who understands Singer? It could be argued that Antonapoulos does, but it's unclear exactly how much understanding Antonapoulos possesses. Perhaps the tragedy of the book is that no one completely escapes their isolation, no one really understands anybody else. Singer, the figure of great understanding, is so isolated and lonely, even with the three people who come to see him and talk to him. But I suppose it could be seen optimistically - that even those who lack the ability to speak  to speak have the ability to connect with others, relieving isolation.

Has anyone else read this book?

This is the first one I've read by McCullers, and I plan on reading more of her work.

More on Frankl

See: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/

"In his bestselling 1946 book, Man's Search for Meaning, which he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, Frankl concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning."

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing," Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, "the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

"In the words of Martin E. P. Seligman, one of the leading psychological scientists alive today, in the meaningful life "you use your highest strengths and talents to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self."

The pursuit of happiness seems to be a topic of near-universal interest. After all, doesn't everybody just want to be happy?

So we try, try, try. We pursue happiness. We go out and meet people and go on vacations and buy things and we might even read books about happiness. And yet...sometimes there is just that niggling feeling that something is missing. Maybe it isn't happiness, but meaning.

I don't mean to say that I believe happiness and meaning are mutually exclusive - I don't think that all - but I do think the article brings up interesting points about the pursuit of happiness versus the pursuit of meaning. I don't think that happiness is necessarily selfish; I think that doing something selfless might make someone pretty happy as well as bring meaning.

To finding meaning.

Lois Lowry: On Empathy

See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/magazine/lois-lowry-the-childrens-author-who-actually-listens-to-children.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0  for full article.

I must admit, I've never read The Giver. It's going on my list. 

The author of The Giver, Lowry, creates this "magical talent" called "veer"  in the novel - "he is able to enter another person’s consciousness and feel what they feel. That is, Gabriel battles evil with empathy." 

Isn't that stunning? There isn't any violence or hatred or any sort of animosity...instead, he feels what the other person feels. 

“The ability to understand other people’s feelings,” Lowry said. “As an encompassing gift that a kid could have — or a human — that could be the one that could save the world. If we could all acquire it to the extent that boy had it, no one would go into a movie theater with a gun.”

To empathy and to books and words and stories and anything and everything that help us develop empathy.

Feeling Known

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/george-saunders-just-wrote-the-best-book-youll-read-this-year.html?pagewanted=3&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130106&_r=0

So I've never actually written anything George Saunders has written. But now I'm adding him to my list.

"One thing is that you read them and you feel known, if that makes any sense. Or, possibly even woollier, you feel as if he understands humanity in a way that no one else quite does, and you’re comforted by it."

I think that is one of the essential functions of art, of books. We all hunger, deep down, for some sense of connection. The feeling that we are not alone in feeling whatever it is that we are feeling at the moment - lost, maybe. Confused and scared and maybe even despairing.

The fact that someone you have never met and probably never will can lift you out of that self-pitying stupor through a line in a book or a phrase in a song and make you "feel known" is a certain type of magic.

To feeling known.

Drafts

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/movies/awardsseason/writers-rethink-words-for-the-big-screen.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&nl=movies&emc=edit_fm_20130104

"David O. Russell wrote 20 drafts of the screenplay for “Silver Linings Playbook,” based on a novel by Matthew Quick. Ol Parker did 43, for four directors, before “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” was done. Tony Kushner’s first pass at “Lincoln,” based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals” and other sources, was 500 pages long."

Can you imagine writing 20 drafts of something? Or 43?

I haven't, so far. I think sometimes we lose sight of how difficult creative work can be, even if you love it and it's the only thing you can see yourself doing. We see the finished product - a novel, a movie, a piece of art - and we marvel at it and we think to ourselves, "I couldn't do that in a million years."

What if we try?

To drafts.

Natasha Trethewey on Poetry

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/natasha-trethewey-poetry-showed-me-that-i-wasnt-alone/2013/01/01/cc1a96da-5384-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do — to make sense of losses...it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief...That poem showed me that I wasn’t alone in feeling that way. That’s what poetry can do for us — to remind us when we feel most alone, we are not at all.
-Natasha Trethewey

I don't know if poetry can ever completely "make sense of losses..." I don't know if anything, really, can do that - not religion nor music nor other people nor love. But I think poetry can be a refuge. And in a shining moment, it can remind us, beautifully, that we aren't alone.

To poetry. To the knowledge that "when we feel most alone, we are not at all."

Thank You

http://www.npr.org/2012/12/28/168142027/decades-later-student-finds-teacher-to-say-thank-you

My name is John Cruitt, and I was in your third-grade class during the 1958-1959 school year. Two days before Christmas, my mother passed away, and you told me that you were there if I needed you. I hope life has been as kind to you as you were to me.
God bless you, always. With great fondness,
John

To saying, "Thank you." To giving thanks.