Life/Time

This song is called Life/Time. It's the last track on my 2017 album Good Night, Fahrenheit. It's about how sometimes it can take years or even decades to understand why things work out the way that they do, if ever.

    It takes a lifetime

    To get it right

    And only sometimes

    Do we find out why...

It's amazing how even seemingly insignificant episodes in our lives can turn out to be remarkably consequential, even though it may take a very long time for the effects of these moments to manifest.

If I may offer a brief anecdote to support my point: one time, many years ago, when I lived in Los Angeles, I used an ATM in a gas station and withdrew my last twenty dollars that was in that account. I was very poor and struggling at the time. Unbeknownst to me, with the surcharge, the withdrawl exceeded the available balance by fifty cents. It also took me about a week and a half before I realized that the bank was charging me twenty dollars a day as an overdraft penalty. By the time I even found out about it, the amount that I "owed" was somewhere in the neighborhood of $180. I complained to someone at the bank, but they refused to do anything about it. I, in turn, refused to pay it. It was not only a matter of principle, but I also simply could not afford it. After all, if I had money in the first place, then I wouldn't have been in this situation.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't think much of it until three or four years later, when my newlywed spouse and I were looking for apartments in Chicago. When we found one that we liked, the landlord ran the credit check, and this $180 unpaid balance to a bank in California showed up. As a result, we didn't get the apartment, and we ended up not moving to Chicago -- all because of a hidden surcharge at an ATM from several years back. When this all happened, it seemed incredibly unfair, as though the universe was out to get me or something. However, years later, in some respects, I realize that it might have actually worked out better that we didn't move to Chicago back then. There are certain other things that would not have played out the way that they did had we taken that route. Life works out the way that it does, and until somebody invents a time machine, then it seems that there's not a whole lot we can do but accept that. This is why it is pointless to regret much of anything.  

Part of me likes to believe that everything happens for some kind of a reason -- but that doesn't necessarily mean that we'll ever understand what that reason is. That's kind of the underlying point of this song. Sometimes things only make sense when you zoom out and look at the big picture, but often when these events first occur, we're too close to the matter to effectively do so. Only with time and wisdom do we gain perspective.

Happy Friday. I encourage anyone who reads this to do some small gesture for someone today that comes from a place of love and kindness, because sometimes even our smallest actions can have enormous consequences. Please remember that this can be a good thing, too. Sometimes a simple act of kindness can change a person's entire life for the better. 

    Today is going to be the day

    That everything changes...