Saturday, March 31, 2012

Day 91: Evolution or Resignation?

It is funny what comes across your feed on Facebook. I am not ashamed to admit that I am a fan of the Ultimate 80's Fan Page. For me, the 80s were a blast (okay, at least the first five years of the 80s were a blast). Besides, how can you take a decade that gave us shoulder pads, big hair, leggings, and songs like "One Night in Bangkok" (with the stellar lyrics: I get my kicks above the waist line sunshine), "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" (George Michael's little shorts should have been a clue, just sayin') and "Hungry Like the Wolf" (WTF is with the lyrics "Smell like I sound") seriously?

So, tonight a song from 1984 popped up on my feed from the 80's fan page and it was actually a song with a bit more meaning. This is Steve Perry's song "Foolish Heart." It was from his solo album (oh sorry, his CD, er from a bunch of his songs on iTunes for you really young people). For those young people, he was the lead singer of the band Journey and his voice is incredible. They have tried to replace him but to no avail. He is irreplaceable, just admit it and move on and call yourselves something else. But once again, I digress.



This song has a lot of meaning for me, but then, the lyrics themselves are heartbreaking (unless you have a heart of stone). But, in 1984, I was 22 years old and in college, and as I was reflecting with one of my FB friends tonight, I seemed to be able to fall in love as soon as I looked at someone. We were pondering that this is part of our evolution and that we have to go through these heartbreaks when we are young to really evolve.

It got me to thinking that if we go through too many of them at such a young age, is it that we evolve, or, is that we just resign ourselves to never really falling in love again because it hurts too much? I like to think that we end up somewhere in the middle between giving it away to anyone who wants it and building (as Sting says) a fortress around our hearts. No matter how we try to protect our hearts, even at 50 years old, they are still open. How else would you explain the ability of a song that is now 28 years old to make me tear up?

No comments:

Post a Comment