Tha Day Before the Last Day of March

Today is officially the day before the last day of March. In fact, this is the last hour before the very last hour of the day before the last day of March. After that, no March. Only April, as far as the eye can see. Think about it.

This weekend I'm faced with a pretty big decision. I've been offered a new job opportunity that would change where I work, how I commute, who I work for, all that stuff. I'm using this weekend to make the decision, although anybody who knows me knows that I make decisions much more quickly than that. I'm usually 90% sure of a choice within 5 minutes of having it presented to me.

As I was driving from work tonight I started thinking about all of the small choices we have in life. All of the simple things we agree to or do that lead to much bigger consequences. The preferences that we have and filters we place that make us so who we are in ways that we cannot ever know.

One of the reasons I committed to keep this blog was because I'm notoriously bad at journaling or keeping my thoughts. One thing I've always been pretty good about is writing songs, though. Songs are very different, though.

For instance, the lyrics to "Accident, which I posted day before last go:

They're drawing pictures on caves
I've seen their minds
To simply be
It's not enough, not enough
And these are my few complaints
No more than patterns on caves
And lies that hurt

And some things you can't say
So you just turn your head away
Don't look it's just an accident
It's just a horrible accident

They're laying hands on the dead
But that's not the worst
It's the feeling
Of true empathy, empathy
And he is somebody's son
He's just like me
We were both
The brightest boys

And some things you can't say
So you just turn your head away
Don't look it's just an accident
It's just a horrible accident
It's just and accident
It's just a horrible, horrible accident

But I can't really look back at the song's lyrics and have that kind of distance. This is a song that I've probably sung hundreds of times. Literally, I've played it many, many times. As a result, my relationship to the song is a lot like the relationship one might have to prayers. I went to catholic church when I was a kid and so like every other catholic I learned the prayers related to the sacraments, such as the Hail Mary. Those prayers are said over and over, to the point that the meaning of the prayer mixes with the rhythm of the cadence, the associations the person praying has with the words, the experiences that have been had around it, etc. In a lot of ways singing those songs is like a meditation or transcendence. That's what it means to me to sing them.