It's All Right

After a weeklong business trip with the usual sense of isolation combined with strange moments of connectedness with airport strangers that business travel usually brings me, I woke up intensely grateful to be back in Boulder. This morning I listened to a Paul Simon song that’s been running through my head all week, the music based on a Bach chorale and the words so very relevant for the current time and for my return home from traveling: “American Tune.”

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I’m all right, I’m all right,
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and von vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

This country continues the long struggle of picking up the pieces from the latest hurricane in Galveston and environs. I see pictures of the places we visited in March on the west coast of the island, now totally destroyed. Meanwhile Wall Street has had its own hurricane and the U.S. government, counter to the current administration’s usual philosophy of letting the free markets resolve these messes, is stepping in to bolster the “giants who cannot be allowed to fail” before they topple and destroy our economy. But it’s only money, right?

Do listen to "American Tune." Simon sang it for the Democratic Convention in 1980. He sang it again on the first Saturday Night Live after 9/11. Simon has said in interviews that he wrote it in 1973 after Nixon won reelection.

And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it’s all right, it’s all right
We’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

In these times it’s important to remember how lucky we still are and how much we have to be grateful for as we seek the change we need in November. You can imagine Paul Simon waking up on a November morning to another four years of Nixon and writing this:

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune
But it’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest.

The song could leave you with a bleak feeling but I choose to take it as a hopeful call to find our way and make it all right before it is too late, to find our way again on this “long strange trip.” It’s time for a different approach. McCain represents safety and assurance to some, but there is no security because we are blazing a new trail on many fronts: financial, international and ecological. These lives we are all living—what radical changes may really be required to continue to live in this world and ensure that all the other inhabitants may also live? I believe Obama recognizes what we all must realize--much must change and greed must fall.

I intend to continue to recognize the abundance I have in the simple joy of living. To draw my happiness from the moment, not from all the “stuff” and money and accumulations. A key question: am I being generous enough to my fellow human beings? Am I practicing enough acts of random kindness? Eckhart Tolle says:

Many poets and sages throughout the ages have observed that true happiness is found in simple, seemingly unremarkable things...Why is it the "least thing" that makes up the best happiness?...The form of little things leaves room for inner space, and it is from inner space, the unconditioned consciousness itself, that true happiness, the joy of Being, emanates. To be aware of little, quiet things, however, you need to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.

And…if you are having a cynical moment (or two or three) as you read this, please ask yourself how you like living with this cynicism every day and what you or anyone else is getting out of it. As John Lennon sang: "You may say I'm a dreamer...but I'm not the only one. I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will be as one."