Songs that inspire

I look out my kitchen window to see Canfield Mountain lit by the setting sun like a candle’s flame warming a dark room. My backyard, neighbor’s yard and the base of the mountain turn from green to black while the mountain peak glows amazingly bright in hues of green, white and auburn. I can’t take my eyes off the view. I realize; my world is beautiful.

In this moment of visual ecstasy I acknowledge that I have not noticed the beauty around me for quite some time. Wrapped up in work, death, disease and disappointment, I have lost track of life’s beauty. My faith is strong, my family supportive and my work rewarding. I have great friends, I live in comfort and today am expecting a granddaughter to join my family. As I focus out of my micro-egocentrism into my macro-sociocentric world, I find beauty.

One might look at how bad, terrible and rotten life might be while struggling to look at the wonderful life lurking outside ones inner-consciousness. When stuck in a cyclic, negative thought pattern I search outside my body for positivism. I often turn to music when searching for inspiration.

Not all songs that inspire are happy tunes. Early in my life I had an opportunity to play, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” with Bobby McFerrin — probably the happiest song ever written. This song inspires me still today not because of the lyrics but because of the vocalist. Bobby was inspirational! He explores every song, note, vocalization and word with excitement, precision and purpose. Bobby’s work helps me understand that music is more than words and chords. Music can create emotion. Because of my brief work with Bobby, most music I listen to emotes.

Tonight I am listening to Pandora on my computer and am inspired by the words I hear. Below you will find many of these lyrics. I hope they inspire you as they inspire me.

• Hide your fires, these here are my desires, and I will give them up to you this time around, and so I’ll be found, with my stake stuck in this ground, marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul.

• I can’t believe it when I hear the jokes they make, at anyone’s expense except their own, would they laugh if they knew who paid?

• We love to talk on things we don’t know about.

• The colors of a rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people going by, I see friends shaking hands sayin’ how do you do, they’re really sayin’ I love you.

• I hear babies cry I watch them grow, they’ll learn much more than I’ll never know, and I think to myself what a wonderful world!

• But when I drink, I spend the next morning in a haze, but we only get so many days, now I have one less.

• Dumbed down and numbed by time and age, your dreams to catch the world, the cage, the highway sets the traveler’s stage, all exits look the same.

• Three words that became hard to say, I and love and you.

• I wonder which brother is better, which one our parents loved the most, I sure did get in lots of trouble, they seemed to let the other go, a tear fell from my father’s eye, I wondered what my dad would say, he said, “I love you and I’m proud of you both, In so many different ways.”

• I don’t know you, but I want you, all the more for that, words fall through me, and always fool me, and I can’t react.

• Until you’ve seen this trash can dream come true, you stand at the edge while people run you through, and I thank the Lord there’s people out there like you.

• Well life is ever changing, but I will always find a constant, and comfort in your love, with your heart my soul is bound, and as we dance I know, that heaven will be found.

• Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy, sunshine in my eyes can make me cry.

Sunshine on the water looks so lovely, sunshine almost always makes me high.

• I thank the Lord for the people I have found.

• Don’t tell me you’re sorry ‘cause you’re not, baby when I know you’re only sorry you got caught.

• You told me that I would find a hole, within the fragile substance of my soul, and I have filled this void, with things unreal, and all the while my character it steals.

• No one laughs at God in a hospital, no one laughs at God in a war, no one’s laughing at God, when they’re starving or freezing or so very poor.

• Don’t worry, be happy!

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Send comments or other suggestions to William Rutherford at [email protected] or visit pensiveparenting.com.