Boomerang
This poignant, simple song by Passenger speaks to me this morning. Let's see what it wants to say.
’Well every day I roll this stone up a hill
Then I watch it roll back down
I throw it out like a boomerang
Spinning in the sky
Then it comes back round
I can’t run or hide away
It always seems to track me down, down
I’m sick and tired of Groundhog day
I need something new to bring me round
You see I wanna live a good life
I don’t wanna just survive
Yeah I wanna love and be loved
I wanna feel alive
I wanna feel alive
Well every night I dream of something good
Then I wake to find it gone
I fly high like a boomerang
But always come back down before too long
Yeah and I can feel it slide away
With every answer I get wrong
I’m sick and tired of Groundhog day
I need something new to move along
You see I want to live a good life
I don’t wanna just survive
Yeah I wanna love and be loved
I wanna feel alive
So give me something I can feel
Something I can trust with all my heart
Give me something that is real
Something to hold on to in the dark
Give me something I can taste
And something that won’t tear my world apart
Give me something that won’t fade away
Cos’ I just wanna live a good life
I don’t wanna just survive
Yeah I wanna love and be loved
I wanna feel alive
And I wanna feel the sun up on my skin
I wanna flourish and thrive, hey
Yeah I just wanna feel peace within
When I close my eyes
When I close my eyes’
Do you have any days you feel like poor old Sisyphus and his boulder?
The power of these kinds of myths is their universality.
I was re-reading Thomas Moore’s book SoulMates yesterday. It’s now about 30 years old so it didn’t hit quite as it did when it first came out in paperback, but I found it helpful.
One of the things that was good was his discussion about the two main instincts of the soul - up and out, and down and in. The soul longs to progress on its path and connect with others, and at the same time wants to flee within away from others. I have certainly spoken about relating to both movements in my big cycles from high to low tide, but it also happens in smaller loops during a day, week, or month, as I waver between wanting to be alone and seeking deep connection with my significant others. My children, husband, fellow contemplatives, cousins, and my other dearest soul friends.
Maybe soul friend is a better term. Anam cara as John O’Donohue’s book famously called it.
“A soul friend is a frequency match.
A solid friend.
You can tell them anything. Even the things you don’t want to tell yourself.
They know your sorrows and elations and insecurities and hold them tenderly.
The person you get excited with, cry to and belly laugh about ridiculous things (I’m talking bellows and howls).
A soul friend that makes you feel safe and seen in the world.
They are also a whole lot of fun. Joy is important.
The hallmark of an anam cara is someone you can be fully yourself around — and at different times in your life, this may be different people. The common thread is that a soul friend is someone who has weathered life with you and is still there, either in your heart or physically, or both.
It is in the shelter of each other that the people live. — Irish proverb
A soul friend either is or isn’t, but there can be a little bit of a grey area in my experience. Someone can be an ‘anam cara’ for a period of your life, but my understanding is that a soul friend is timeless (like your soul).”
You know what’s really weird about a soul friend or anam cara? I have know each one I have usually within weeks of our first meeting. Something inside me sings, “This is one!” I felt that when I met my friend Faye almost 45 years ago. And Ken, my first love, over 40 years ago. And Kathy, my contemplative anam cara, whom I e-met in my “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” year, when I was 42. And my husband Robert; I was 44 at the time. And again in late April of this year, when I met my most recent anam cara.
But I digress.
Returning to Boomerang. Yes, back to Boomerang! Ha.
The longing to live well, to love well, to be loved well… is this not so much of the stuff of life?
To love, serve, and cherish God/the Divine/the Universe/Spirit (however you call this Reality) as manifesting in each person one cares about and cares for?
Ok, maybe that’s not you. But it resonates with me, especially for those closest to me.
To put it another way:
Maybe I want everything’
Du siehst, ich will viel.
Vielleicht will ich Alles (Rainer Maria Rilke, from the Book of Hours)
I don’t know how much you know about Rilke. Intimate relationships were not easy for him, understandably, considering his problematic relationships with both mother and father. But he passionately wanted to connect to others, and through his poetry, continues to reach generation after generation of others whose souls are moved profoundly by both his poetry and prose.
Or referencing Feist:
Or about the desire to love and be loved to the very end:
Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden
Zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh.
Ach, wie vergnügt wär so mein Ende,
Es drückten deine schönen Hände
Mir die getreuen Augen zu.
‘Be thou with me and I’ll go gladly
To death and on to my repose.
Ah, how my end would bring contentment,
If, pressing with thy hands so lovely,
Thou wouldst my faithful eyes then close.’
Grief may be the price of love on the one hand, but there is a profound consolation for me to know in my heart that my most loved ones will be with me when I close my eyes for the final time, even if it be only in spirit.
I think this is one of the reasons I adore the Brahms Requiem so much.
Is it morbid to think a lot about dying in the middle of one’s life? I think not. Death is merely the next word spoken after a life well lived. You could think of it as the final word but to those who believe in a life to come or reincarnation, it is not the end, really, is it? So that is the context of the hopeful serenity of the Brahm’s Requiem, arguably the most human of all requiems. Interesting blog, by the way. I hadn’t realized Brahms was inspired to write it first after the death of his beloved mentor, Robert Schumann, and more proximally after his mother’s death.
As another digression, and example of anam cara relationship, why didn’t Brahms marry Clara Schumann after her husband Robert died? This blog gives a fair amount of background, though we will probably never really know. But there is no doubt they were soul friends.
Well, that’s probably enough rambling on this topic from me for today. :)