A Life Mirrored By Songs

There is a book that was recommended to me that has some things I find very sad for the writer and those who follow his suggestions. He is all about finding your true self, your inner voice and your higher consciousness, your highest self. While I am all for personal growth and self-discovery, he suggests that it is that quest that supersedes all else. I suppose if you want to end up living in an ashram that may work. However, I believe as John Donne did, "that no man is an island." Others must come into the equation when you are making your choices. The author tries to persuade you that you must find your own values and beliefs and shed those that were passed on to you from others speaking into your life. This is something I don't believe is an either or thing, the values that are passed down from one generation to the next are what make a history, what gives roots and substance. The key, to me, is choosing those that serve a higher purpose and discarding those that had parasitically attached without truth and value.

For me, there were many times that those instilled values may have given me short term pain, but long term benefit. When it came to my ex-wife, our relationship started actually by my wanting to protect her and lift her out of a dangerous and dysfunctional situation with her abusive father and addicted mother. The relationship was tumultuous at best, I learned that you can take someone out of the abuse but might not be able to take the long-term effects out of their psyche. I once had a business mentor, a man I greatly respected and followed, tell me to divorce her because she was holding me back. That was totally unacceptable to me, he may have been correct, but to me there was a higher purpose than discarding for business success. She eventually left me, and I allowed her to take all our assets and I kept all our liabilities to avoid the only thing I refused of paying her 15% of my income for life. She was the one that was doing the things that were cause for divorce, but I didn't fight her. This was short term damage to me, but I have always felt good about the decision. I believe in "you make your bed your lay in it." She had, and has, no one in her life to really be there for her, granted she has painted herself into that corner, but I wanted nothing to do with adding to her challenges.

There is no one who could convince me that I wasn't rewarded for that when I met my wife a few weeks later. It was when I was in to buy the cheapest possible waterbed to no longer have to sleep on the floor. It was her managing the store. I asked her out when she called later to schedule the delivery. The funny thing was our state of minds when this date happened. She had decided that all men were jerks so she was going to get a free meal and that was it, I was in a phase where I was dating a different woman every night. My theory was if I never saw someone more than once a week, I couldn't fall into a rebound situation. When we went out there was something magical, unexplainable, everything that could go wrong did, horrible bands at night clubs, running into a friend who was cheating on his wife, just one thing after another. However, I canceled every date I had scheduled for the week and she and I were together every night. The one night when we didn't plan to see each other, I was at a company outing where a co-worker fell off the wagon and was spiraling out of control. I called her and she came with me to babysit him to keep him from hurting himself. I really saw her heart that night. Within two weeks we were engaged. We weren't married for two years, because I got cold feet, starting wondering when the other shoe would drop and she might act like my ex. I thank God she was willing to allow me that time.

The concept of finding your highest self, to me, was finding the one who self was blended and intertwined together. The song, "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" by Brian Adams, when I first heard it years later so captured that feeling that I now feel it is part of my soul. It was like, "That's it, that is what I have been trying so say for so long!" Early in our marriage she was on a fast track with corporate America moving up and with a bright future, when our first son was born, sleep was something he had no interest in. So we made a choice, for self-preservation short term, but for what we believed was best for our children long-term for her to come home and be a full-time mom. To us, there was no higher calling, no higher priority.

To accommodate that choice I worked a lot of hours, and often in more than one venture at a time. I cannot count the nights that meant I was racing the sunrise to get home while it was still "tonight." I am sure that she often felt like a single mom during those times. When the song "Beth" by Kiss it would cut to my soul, especially if I was driving home from wherever late at night. The song, "Cat's in the Cradle" was just as much for me when it came to looking at my sons, as was "Butterfly Kisses" with my daughter. It is uncanny how some songs can say what you feel to you so clearly that they feel to be a part of you. Recently, for the first time, I heard the song by Lady Gaga, "I'll Never Love Again," has there ever been a better description of how two souls joined together actually feel? For me, a life lived loving others more than yourself, of course loving yourself you can't give love if you don't, but being part of something much bigger than just you is truly finding your highest self. When you live your life intertwined with others, choices must be made. There have been several times opportunities have presented themselves that I chose no because it is about more than me. I recall one in particular where I was offered to work for a sales and motivational company, they wanted me to travel and speak 200 times a year for a thousand dollars a day. I always wanted to be Zig Ziglar, this was so exciting for a couple minutes. I told the one making the offer "let me talk this over with my wife." However, I wasn't ten steps away before I turned around and declined the offer. In those ten steps I saw the faces of my wife and three children and knew that if I was traveling that much, they either wouldn't be there physically, or at least emotionally. What seemed to be my life's dream was very easy to say no to, it didn't come close to what I had.

When the author speaks of letting go of your values, habits and beliefs passed down to you, I agree if they are destructive, but isn't that who we are? Isn't that what makes us a part of something more, something bigger, something lasting, something worth passing along? I treasure the values passed down to me by those I loved, and want to honor them by passing them down to continue beyond my own time. I say to sift through and separate the wheat from the chaff, but don't throw out that wheat.