The Blessings

I really like the singer Dar Williams, and one of my favorite songs is called "The Blessings." What I love so much about the song is that over the last year, I've found meaning in different verses depending on what was going on in my life. The end of the song is about being able to choose what you take away from an experience, what stories you tell. The following verse in the middle never really hit me until yesterday:

I had the blessings, there's nobody there, there's nobody home
Yeah the blessings, in the moment I was most alone
And aimless as a fooltime fool, the joke was on me.
I got all of those birds flying off of that tree, and that's a blessing.

I think people derive their happiness or sense of self from different things. (And this can be fluid over the course of a lifetime.) For some people, praise is really important, or good grades, or the approval of authority figures. For others, self-worth depends on being attractive to their preferred sex. For me, it's social feedback. I don't mean social approval-- I'm ok with some people disliking me-- I mean something a bit deeper than popularity and a bit shallower than being indispensable.

Not receiving this feedback is challenging for me, and I have some days where I'm quite lonely. I'll get sort of into being lonely, and think: Aha. This is what it feels like to be sad. Whenever I feel this way, there's always something small that happens and then suddenly I'm happy again. The things are trivial-- but there is always, always something. Yesterday, I was in a bad mood and went for a run and saw a bunch of kindergardeners walking in two lines up the hill. They were all wearing matching uniforms with yellow hats and started waving to me and shouting "Heddddo!" It was so cute that I was in a good mood for the rest of the day.

I think that's what Dar is saying about "all those birds flying out of that tree." To me, that's part of the difference between being happy and having a bad day and just being unhappy. I think true unhappiness is often characterized by an emotional inertia or numbness. I can tell I'm fundamentally happy because I still get excited over the birds in the tree.

I explained this to my friend and fellow Dar affectionado, Allie, who got what I meant, but sorry if I'm just rambling. I take lyrics pretty seriously, as you can see.