One Thing

Some days there are a bunch of songs that I consider blogging about, and then I actively choose one of them. Some days (though not often), I don't land on any song that resonates. And then there are days, like today, when a song comes to me -- not from my ipod but from the internal jukebox -- insistently, almost like an alarm that I didn't set and can't turn off (I can only push snooze for a temporary reprieve). This morning every time I woke -- at 4:30am, at 5:00am, at 5:45am -- this song was playing. I had a bunch of really weird dreams involving, among other things, ultrasound film of a baby, a car crash, friends I haven't seen in a long time and who aren't particularly fond of each other with bodies intertwined -- and after each of these dream/sleep sequences, I'd wake up, again, to this:

If I traded it all

If I gave it all away for one thing

Just for one thing

If I sorted it out

If I knew all about this one thing...

Which I find fascinating. I don't know when I last heard this song, but it fits right in there with the theme of Wouldn't It Be Nice, and I feel like now I have an additional insight related to what that one thing might be.

Yesterday I was having a chat with one of my favorite friends to discuss relationships with, and we were talking about how hard it is to give up on that feeling that a man is going to be the one to, as she puts it: "fill me up." (And she doesn't mean in the sense that the phrase is used in the fine film Election, at least, she's not restricting it to the sexual meaning.) She's become increasingly aware that a man -- a relationship -- being in love -- can only do a part of that. It's a little easier for me, in some ways, because I had no idea (until quite recently) I could be so filled up by loving a man. But I still, as I think we all do, sometimes put too much on my relationship, probably because 1) taking responsibility for ourselves is sometimes kind of a drag; and 2) the alternative is to admit that sometimes being alive means suffering:

Even though I know

I don't want to know

Yeah I guess I know

I just hate how it sounds

Not to mention how it feels. Ultimately, the one thing that you're trading it all for is not a (wo)man, but a decision:

To be responsible for your own happiness (which very well may involve, as it does for my friend and me, loving and being loved by a really fabulous man).

To choose to be in the moment -- in every moment that you can -- which includes the ones when the (wo)man in your life is "filling you up" and when (s)he isn't. And to be ok with that.

...Wouldn't that be something?