The Future Hasn’t Been Written

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I’m an optimistic guy.

I’m actually a problem-solver too.

I start my days thinking about the problems I have to solve, and I gain my satisfaction solving them, whether it’s at work or home or in the next thing I’m writing.

My frustrations gather when I can’t solve them in the time-frame I’ve given myself.

This past week has made me a little dizzy...

...because of a song.

Moonlight Motel off the excellent new Springsteen record, “Western Stars” hit me as hard as a song ever has. The narrator is back in a place that he visited as a much younger man. He remembers the love and peace and beauty...

...but the place is now a dump.

It’s a huge metaphor about things breaking down, decaying, and dying.

Yet the narrator is still alive, and he’s picking through the rubble in his mind.

It hammered me.

I visited the past...

...and got caught mourning.

I’m an optimist!!

But I couldn’t shake the feeling of loss that the lyrics hammered home.

I wasn’t depressed.

It didn’t stop me in my tracks, but I felt it!

I’ve lived long enough to learn one thing for sure:

Pain teaches you.

Okay, maybe two things:

It’s not healthy to get stuck in the past.

The wheels have to keep turning.

The beauty of the song is in the remembering, and in the hope of the last verse.

Through the week, I started my days with the entire record in order. I felt the beauty and hopefulness as it was intended, but still wasn’t quite there.

And on a drive to Syracuse on Thursday evening, the same guy, Bruce, brought me back around.

He was talking to introduce his old song, “Dancing in the Dark” and he was thanking his fans for being along for the ride for years and years...

...and he said:

“As my mighty Mom always told me: ‘The future has not yet been written! So, put on your dancing shoes, and get to work!”

There’s beauty and pain behind you.

There’s the moment you’re living right now.

And there is the future.

You’re writing it.

Put on those dancing shoes!

Indeed.

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