"Sights and sounds
pull me back down
another year
I was here
I was here
how did it go so
fast
you'll say as we are looking back
and then we'll understand
we held gold dust in our hands
in our hands"
in our hands"
from Gold Dust, Tori Amos
I will preface these words with this--I would not change one thing about my life. My significant relationships mean more to me than I could ever say. With that said...
I wrote recently of the powerful emotional effect while listening to music of the 60s on Sirius/XM. Is what I feel wonder or regret? Wonder is a good thing. Regret is not. The biggest problem with regret is that it's an emotion that leaves you totally without any means of changing anything. No matter how much you might wish that something had been different, it wasn't different. It happened the way it happened. You can certainly change how you think about the event, but you can't change anything of the event itself.
I wrote recently of the powerful emotional effect while listening to music of the 60s on Sirius/XM. Is what I feel wonder or regret? Wonder is a good thing. Regret is not. The biggest problem with regret is that it's an emotion that leaves you totally without any means of changing anything. No matter how much you might wish that something had been different, it wasn't different. It happened the way it happened. You can certainly change how you think about the event, but you can't change anything of the event itself.
Those emotions have now been profoundly complicated. I was invited to join a memories group on Facebook, Memories of Enterprise, Alabama. My hometown. So I joined. At first the moderator posted historical photos of the city from the 1800s and early 1900s as the city was founded. THese photos include those of the dedication of the world famous Boll Weevil Monument in 1919, a monument that defines the identity of the town.
Over a period of weeks those photos became more and more recent. More and more personal. He started posting photos from my school years. The emotional whiplash was intense. If the music of the 60s dragged me back 50 years, the photos cruelly froze moments of time. A lot of moments of time. Photos of my schools and classrooms. College Street Elementary School. Enterprise Junior High School that I watched burn to the ground. Enterprise High School that got blown away by a tornado. .Photos of my classmates. Photos of me with my classmates. Photos of my teachers. Photos of my band marching in The Festival of States. It's an aerial photo but I'm somewhere in that picture blasting my trombone. For five years that was my band. Heck, my senior year I was president of that band! Photos of my friends. Photos of girlfriends. Photos of girls I wanted to be my girlfriend. Photos of girls that I knew liked me, but who I never gave the time of day. I could have. Maybe I should have. But I didn't.
Over a period of weeks those photos became more and more recent. More and more personal. He started posting photos from my school years. The emotional whiplash was intense. If the music of the 60s dragged me back 50 years, the photos cruelly froze moments of time. A lot of moments of time. Photos of my schools and classrooms. College Street Elementary School. Enterprise Junior High School that I watched burn to the ground. Enterprise High School that got blown away by a tornado. .Photos of my classmates. Photos of me with my classmates. Photos of my teachers. Photos of my band marching in The Festival of States. It's an aerial photo but I'm somewhere in that picture blasting my trombone. For five years that was my band. Heck, my senior year I was president of that band! Photos of my friends. Photos of girlfriends. Photos of girls I wanted to be my girlfriend. Photos of girls that I knew liked me, but who I never gave the time of day. I could have. Maybe I should have. But I didn't.
Looking at the photos of those young men and women in my class reminded me of how much unfinished business I had left there. This experience for me is completely different than going to a class reunion. At the reunion it's the grown up version of the person I'm reminiscing with. These photos are the then version of all of us--frozen and forever unchanging. That unfinished business? What can I do about any of it? Absolutely nothing. What can I feel about it? A world of things. Anything I choose to feel. And it doesn't feel all that good.
The lesson for me --As tempting as it is to try to go back to Neverland, it's a Sirene's song. Gold dust is a byproduct of machining gold. Pure gold. Why should I settle for the gold dust of wishful thinking when I can have the solid gold of reality? After graduating from the junior college, I left Enterprise, Alabama in 1973 at age twenty. That was forty-two years ago. Do I really think the 60s have anything for me? Anything at all? Did I leave something there that I should have brought with me?
I live in Georgia with my wife of thirty-nine years. She wasn't a high school sweetheart. She was my college sweetheart. She was from another time and another place. Strange thing though, I not only have our shared history from the beginning of our time together, but she shares my collective history from before our time. "Enterprise" belongs to her too. She went with me to those reunions. Although she didn't meet those girls in the photos, she met real living, breathing human beings. She laughed along with some of those "girls" I never gave the time of day. Guess what? They didn't care. Believe it or not, they've had a pretty good life without me. Joke's on me.
When I watch a good movie, I don't just watch it, the movie watches me. I recently watched a movie on Netflix that I had never heard of. The movie is Hector and the Search for Happiness. Hector leaves his job and Clara the woman he loves to travel the world to find happiness. He also left to find Agnes, a woman he used to love. And thinks he may still love. When he finds Agnes after traveling the world, he finds her very married and with three children. As he struggles with his unfinished business and tries to tell her how he feels, she says, "Hector, I don't know who you think you're in love with, but it's not me." He goes home. He goes home to his work and to Clara. And he's happy.
For the most part, in spite of the punch it packs, I have enjoyed listening to 60s music. Seeing all those old photos? Not so much. But starting today I'm listening to Classical music for a while. It was all composed long before my time. And I've left that Facebook group. "Sights and sounds pull me back down another year." I think from now on I'll go forward.
When I watch a good movie, I don't just watch it, the movie watches me. I recently watched a movie on Netflix that I had never heard of. The movie is Hector and the Search for Happiness. Hector leaves his job and Clara the woman he loves to travel the world to find happiness. He also left to find Agnes, a woman he used to love. And thinks he may still love. When he finds Agnes after traveling the world, he finds her very married and with three children. As he struggles with his unfinished business and tries to tell her how he feels, she says, "Hector, I don't know who you think you're in love with, but it's not me." He goes home. He goes home to his work and to Clara. And he's happy.
For the most part, in spite of the punch it packs, I have enjoyed listening to 60s music. Seeing all those old photos? Not so much. But starting today I'm listening to Classical music for a while. It was all composed long before my time. And I've left that Facebook group. "Sights and sounds pull me back down another year." I think from now on I'll go forward.
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