Everything Is Connected. Even the Songs We Carry.
What happens when an old song becomes a new teacher.
What song has stayed with you for decades and somehow keeps changing as you change?
For me, one of those songs is Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve.
I loved it from the first time I heard it. The sweeping orchestral sound caught my attention, but it was something deeper that kept drawing me back. The mood. The longing. The persistence.
Over the years, I learned more about the song’s complicated history and its connection to The Rolling Stones. Even that feels fitting somehow. Music influencing music. Artists influencing artists. One story woven into another.
Everything is connected.
When I was younger, I mostly heard the melancholy in the song.
Now, I hear something else.
I hear resilience.
I hear someone continuing forward despite the bumps, interruptions, disappointments, and expectations that come with being alive.
Life has a way of teaching us that it is rarely one thing. It is grief and gratitude. Joy and heartbreak. Holding on and letting go. Becoming a grandparent while grieving a parent. Finding new purpose while saying goodbye to old identities.
The older I get, the more I appreciate that life is not a problem to solve. It is a symphony to participate in.
Some notes are beautiful.
Some are painful.
Together, they create the music of a life.
That is what this song reminds me of.
None of us are living in isolation. We are shaped by the people who came before us, the experiences that formed us, the communities that sustain us, and the choices we make every day about how we want to show up in the world.
The songs we love become part of us.
The stories we tell become part of us.
The people we love become part of us.
Everything is connected.
And maybe that is what is in it for us.
Permission.
Permission to stop trying to separate the sweet from the bitter.
Permission to stop waiting for life to become simple before we appreciate it.
Permission to recognize that the challenges, joys, losses, relationships, and lessons are not detours from our lives.
They are our lives.
A note about the video
If you have never seen the music video, it is worth a watch.
Richard Ashcroft spends the entire video walking down a crowded street. People bump into him. People get irritated. People expect him to move out of the way.
He just keeps walking.
When I first saw it years ago, I thought it was about rebellion.
Watching it now, I see persistence.
I see someone carrying his own song through a crowded world.
That image feels even more powerful today.
We all have our own crowded streets.
Caregiving.
Work.
Health challenges.
Family responsibilities.
Dreams that changed shape.
Losses we never expected.
And yet, somehow, we keep walking.
Maybe that is the bittersweet symphony.
Not that life becomes easier.
But that we learn to keep moving forward while carrying the full orchestra of our experiences with us.
Watch the Music video:
Bittersweet Symphony
So I’ll leave you with the same question I started with:
What song has walked beside you through different chapters of your life, revealing new meaning as you changed right along with it?
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I love this song, going to listen to it and think about a song that fits the bill for me.
Melinda, Aloha!! The people we've met, the books we've read, the songs we've loved, and even the article of yours I'm reading right now are surely connected to our lives somewhere along the way. 🌺