Not to be confused with the coming of age novel by Helen Tucker... about stringing together bits and pieces of information about you and your family and friends until something new and perhaps unexpected is revealed... I have not read it since it came out... I bought it at an airport shop for a flight based solely on the cover and the title... it's geared toward a younger audience...but it was a good read none the less. I remembered it when I was working on a title for this month for when we have the time to take a moment to reflect on the voices from past summers and experiences... maybe more importantly sometimes it's more important to listen again extra carefully to our own voices from the past.
I'm going to back up a little to last month about reflections and echos... that is more or less what I'm talking about today. There are sights and sounds of summers that flash vividly in my memory... mostly songs but also people and events.
I would be lying if I said I don't have a favorite season (it's summer) but as for all the rest... I have a favorite feeling about all of them...But in summer it's the open windows and fresh air mixed with night blooming jasmine... and music playing while soft breezes make the curtains sway...The sunsets, stars and the sound of the ocean... and finding shade on a hot bright day... and the way the light through the trees dapples the scenery...the smell of suntan lotion or a bonfire at the beach and the sound of chirping crickets singing me to sleep... maybe most importantly I love the kind of tired that comes from fresh air and too much sun... there have been so many memories over the years from the sights and sounds of my summers... I was just thinking the other day... one of the perks of getting older is that we don't ever lose all the ages we have been and most of the things that go along with it... we carry it with us as Ernest Hemingway told us... like a movable feast...
There are a lot of rough roads and detours on life journeys... but some of the most difficult tests we all faced usually resulted in strength and resilience... the life that each of us actually live and show up for everyday is what lead us to being able to enjoy life on a hopefully mostly carefree highway and the next bend in the road leading to the next adventure.
Many of the sounds of summer voices are songs in the playlists on my phone... I have several but some are favorites that evoke certain feeling and moods.
I have one called favorites... the truth of the matter is all these songs are my favorites... otherwise I would not be listening to them... but I love what happened to one of them once during a syncing episode or a system update I'm to exactly sure... but a photo of me showed up on my Hawaiian music play list; it was taken on a fun summer day at the beach in Honolulu... I had a blast that day and think about it and the people when I see the image. Subsequently another sync or update had replaced it with something else...so I'm happy to have saved the evidence as another example of the sounds of summer voices... For the. last couple months I've written about a particular song that helped define an important segment or chapter of my life... This month I'm going to talk briefly about "The Girl From Yesterday" by The Eagles...the song spoke to me immediately as I was hearing it for the first time... I've spent a lot of my life leaving and looking for the place I belonged... I've come to terms with most of the people and places I left behind because... well...I have always loved the sound of me walking away from people and places that were not meant for me... or right for me... what you may or may not know about me is I used to be the kind of person who would stick around for longer than I should have and tolerated things that I did not deserve... so as a result because of that ... now when I'm gone... I'm gone forever. We all deserve to have a life where we are loved...not just liked, not lusted after, not settled for... but loved.
It's very important to fully understand that there are almost infinite reasons we are in situations or relationships with various people over the course of our life... some are a lesson and we are there for maybe a season or a specific reason... As difficult as it is to accept, some of the people we loved the most were not meant to be part of the entire story and coming to terms and understanding those endings is often painful.
Don't ever close your eyes or your mind to the fact that there are so many incredible people, experiences and adventures just sometimes waiting for you to turn and say hello... or be responsive to people who turn and say hello to you.. OK quick story before I go on... I was on the subway a couple of days ago (I usually prefer to stand) and a very attractive young man gestured and offered me his seat... I smiled and thanked him but continued to stand and got off at my stop and said to my other half " Do I really look that old and decrepit that people are now offering me a seat on public transit?"... and I guess it went over my head because I was overreacting... my other half said... "I think he wanted to flirt with you because he thought you were interesting and handsome."... Oh... OK I like that scenario better... I'm bringing it all up again because it's important to see the way things really are not just how we interpret them at the spur of the moment or relive them in our mind several years later.
So back to what I was saying... if you actually know me you would probably consider me someone with above average intelligence and having a sharp diagnostic ability... but sometime I miss the signs and signals... maybe I don't want to see them I'm not sure... but someone recently reached out to me that a mutual friend of ours had died and I was told that he spent the last 30 something years of his life trying to mend a broken heart after I moved back to New York from London... I was flabbergasted... I never considered this person more than an acquaintance...so suddenly I was the person who walked away and never returned in the song "The Girl From Yesterday"... It's incredibly important to know that a lot of things in life get lost in translation between what we feel and what we say... Or as I've said in the pages here many times "Things can get lost between the shadow and the act."... had I understood all the crucial information of how this person felt about me I'm sure I would have been able to help them understand my feelings and actions and saved them thirty some years of sadness, tears and heartbreak... but maybe not because some people only want to know and see what they believe.... Always tell people how important they are to you and what they mean to you and why... This could have saved half a lifetime of a lot of bottled up confused emotions... so now I am left with some lingering guilt that would not exist if the lines of communication had been open and honest...I've always felt that it's important to let things end and begin again when they are supposed to, let yourself heal and let life unfold for the next chapter.. Deep in my heart I know I was not responsible for someone's misinterpretations but there is still unfortunately a degree of regret that I can't do anything about.
There is nothing that can be done to change the past... In the future we need to be fully aware of how we interpret the signs and situations if we are completely honest about our motives and actions that result from them... I think maybe a lot of us overthink the bad and negative things sometimes... so we need to train ourselves to overthink all the good things too and all the things that went right...zoom in on all the little things that make you happy... That's part of what I'm going to consider this summer while I'm recharging at the beach and writing the outline for what comes next.
I want to leave you with this...There is a word that only exists in the Greek language...Filotimo...Filortimo is a complex array of virtues that encompass honour, dignity, generosity, hospitality, compassion and much, much more...it's basically the essence of doing good in life... This is where I'm going to start with where life is going in the chapter I'm writing now and see where and who it leads to.
Some of the sounds of summer voices should remind us that life is a collection of beautiful ordinary moments... I'l be be overthinking them as well while I'm at the beach
Or at the pool...
I'm still at a crossroad with everything happening in the world right now... but I was thinking about something that James Baldwin wrote..."People pay for what they do...and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become... and they pay for it very simply by the lives they lead."
I'm letting go of what I thought my life and the world were supposed to be right now...and appreciating me and it for what it is...My normal days are what a lot of people dream about... I'm going to start by being grateful for it every single day... For those of you who have been reading for a while... it's the two year anniversary of me donating a kidney... I just saw my nephrologist... and everything is going great... so there's another thing to be thankful for... I've had to spend a lot of time recently in doctors waiting rooms and exam rooms alone with my thoughts and what I've come up with is that we stress too much about things and people during our one and only life... that could end at any given moment... we have to indulge in the extravagance of living... So in thinking about what's next and considering the possibilities available... I've come up with that maybe the ending I'm are afraid of right now is simply the new beginning I need the most.
I've had to remind myself more than once what someone said to me a long, long time ago..."You worry way too much for someone who always figures things out."... probably one of the most important messages for me remembering the sounds of summer voices from the past.
... Have a wonderful summer... meet me back here in September... if you are so inclined read some of the past chapters again... I've had some new insights and appreciation for them in rereading a few.
Me ke aloha... BozB
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