Note to self. It’s a good idea to heed your own advice. Don’t listen to sad music.

I made the mistake of listening to iTunes today, specifically some country songs I’d downloaded last year. My favorite kind of music is the blues and they say country music is just the blues for white boys and that would be me. Over the years I’ve developed a taste for just about all kinds of music and since I hadn’t played these in a while I started the playlist.

One of the songs is about a father at his daughter’s wedding and well, if you’ve read many of my posts you know that’s a piece of my heart.

The song is called I Loved Her First by Heartland. It’s a sentimental song under the best circumstances. The first part goes like this . . .

Look at the two of you dancing that way
Lost in the moment and each others face
So much in love you’re alone in this place
Like there’s nobody else in the world
I was enough for her not long ago
I was her number one
She told me so
And she still means the world to me
Just so you know
So be careful when you hold my girl
Time changes everything
Life must go on
And I’m not gonna stand in your way

But I loved her first and I held her first
And a place in my heart will always be hers
From the first breath she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I knew the love of a father runs deep
And I prayed that she’d find you someday
But it still hard to give her away
I loved her first

Or just watch the video -

The Love of a Father Runs Deep

The next thing I know all I can hear are those word echoing in my heart. All I can see through the tears is my daughter. All I can feel is a tidal wave of sadness. And then . . . an awareness hit me. Why am I doing this to myself? I turned it off and went outside in the hopes that the cool air would clear my mind and emotions. It was a little bit of an ‘ah-ha’ moment. I didn’t run away from it. I became aware of it. It lost some of its power and I gained some. I was still a little sad but instead of a blanket of melancholy that in the past would have stayed with me for days, it became a passing sadness.

I have issues with you people!

Everyone has issues, but when you’re walking a black dog they’re often right below the surface. Given the right circumstances these can easily break through to the top and wreck havoc. Like a pebble dropped into a still pond, these ripples spread out across your mind and stir up your emotions.

If you remain unaware - if you just keep running away from the pain - it will chase after you, closer than even your own shadow. Like an anxiety filled dream where you’re running from a nightmare of a beast but no matter how hard you run, you don’t move. What happens when you stop? Where does your shadow go in the noon day sun? The light of awareness is like this. The cause of my shadow (my past) is still there but the light that awareness brings to these issues makes their shadows fade.

Be Here Now, or Be Here Later

I don’t know what caused this moment of awareness other than I’ve been diligently practicing mindfulness meditation everyday now. Just reserving 30 minutes a day, every day, for me to ‘just be’ in this moment without judgment and without wanting things to be different than they are. It’s a very subtle shift into a conscious awareness of ‘now’.

Wanting things to be different than they are is a common enough way of being for all of us. It is after all the motivation behind change and invention. We want things to be better so we take action to enable a change to occur. What happens with a lot of us (depressed or not) is it becomes an obsession and we find ourselves always dissatisfied with the way things are . . . including some pretty wonderful everyday things.

It’s not just the colorful sunsets either but all the things big and small that make up life - the warmth of a hot shower, the look your lover gives you, the taste & texture of our food, the conversations we have (has anyone every said, “You don’t listen to me”?), etc. If we’re constantly thinking of the future or ruminating over the past, we’re not really ‘here’ and so we miss out on life. Good, bad and in between we need to stop running from it and start experiencing it directly as it happens.

I think I’ll keep at it and see what happens next.

On another note. Despite the headlines, this great little article is actually on the value of forgiveness. We can all use a little of that, not only for others but ourselves too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 12:10 pm and is filed under mindfulness.