Don't Let Your "Life" Get in the Way of Living

What defines you? Are you really living or just checking things off your to-do list?

Do you define yourself by your occupation? Your name? Your family? Where you live? How much money you make or the kind of car you drive? How fat or skinny you happen to be or the kind of clothes you wear? I've been meeting a lot of people recently as I moved to a new place and started a new job. In meeting all of these new faces and shaking these new hands, I found myself wondering, "Why do we all introduce ourselves like this?" Does, "Hello, I'm Mandy." tell anyone ANYTHING about who I really am? Would, "Hello, I'm a 30 year old optimistic atheist who sees sun, music and water as my divine inspiration." more clearly reflect me? After pondering this for a few days and throwing around the idea with a few friends and my mom, I decided to abandon such deep thoughts and just stick with the normal greeting. For now. I had no answers and I think I was freaking everyone around me out a little.

Then weeks later, while losing myself (or, perhaps, finding myself) at an outdoor Dave Matthews Band concert, I turned around from my most bodacious seat in the 7th row, to look out into the sea of smiling faces, waving arms, clapping hands and girating hips... about 30,000 faces to be exact. There we all were. United. In rhythm. Loving the moment. A community brought together to celebrate our love of music. Really, it was a celebration of life and joy. Unabashed expression of joy, gratitude and inspiration was happening all around me. 360 degrees. And in surround sound, courtesy of Dave's celebratory lyrics. It's difficult to articulate what that experience really felt like. Let's put it this way, it inspired me to write this blog post. I couldn't tell if it was the herbacious contact high, divine musical enlightenment or the awe-inspiring awareness of this connectetedness that jolted me into a place of true, pure euphoria. Needless to say, my world was rocked that night. For that I am truly, truly grateful. I thought to myself, both in that moment, and on my bike ride home in the cool night, "THIS is life. THIS is what makes life worth living for. I LOVE this life. THANK YOU." I'm not sure who I was thanking... Dave himself for bringing us all together like this? Myself for always finding a way to make the pilgrimage to DMB shows every summer no matter what my geographic or economic situation? The good folks who built and preserve the lovely Saratoga Performing Arts Center and surrounding state park? Whoever the hell it was, I was in a state of absolute gratitude.

That night, the band treated us to a fairly rare performance of an early song, "Dancing Nancies". What is a Nancy? Literally it means a transvestite prostitute but most fans interpret Dave's use as a metaphor to the general sense of confusion about ourselves that we all have to deal with in life but that when we look around, we realize the beauty in everything and everyone that surrounds us. The opening lyrics reflect the question, "could I have been anyone other than me". When I heard these lyrics Friday night, I was brought back to my questioning about what defines me and thusly, how do I introduce myself when meeting somone. Hereis the first part of the song (sorry for the shakey camera):



Later in the song, one is reminded:

"Sing and dance I’ll play for you tonight
And thrill at it all
Dark clouds may hang on me sometimes
But I’ll work it out then

I Look up at the sky
My mouth is open wide, lick and taste
What's the use in worrying, what's the use in hurrying
Turn, turn we almost become dizzy"

So, really, does it even matter anyway. (question marked intentionally omitted)

For the full lyrics, click here.

The next night, in true DMB fan fashion, I prepared to head out to another concert - N2. "N2" is night two in DMB fan land. This time, I would be accompanied by a dear, "old" friend from my beloved days as a music student at Hartt. Lauren and I had barely seen each other in almost the decade (yowzahs, a decade?) since I graduated. While this saddened me greatly as we always had such a blast together, I was so grateful that I'd be seeing her, especially in this context of music and mutual DMB love. And so grateful that we'd be sharing in this awesome connectedness together! Again, I was reminded (really, smacked in the face) music's power to bring people together. Not only was I brought together with complete strangers, but Lauren was entering my life again via music. How freakin' cool!



As Lauren and I anxiously awaited DMB to take the stage, we played with our beach ball, wondering how we could make our apparently typical rainbow colored ball stand out as there would be many balls bouncing around the mass of bouncing bodies that night. All inspired and feeling green from walking to the concert, I thought, "What would Jason Mraz do?" He's a DMB fan. He loves fun stuff like beach balls and connectedness. I took all of the great things he puts out there about life and we covered that ordinary beach ball with lots of words everyone could appreciate. Words like love, gratitude, sex, joy, recycle and inspire. Before that ball even got a bouncin', it started infecting people with its message. Unexpectedly, people around us started talking to us about the ball, pointing at it or asking to look at it. It was cool. About halfway through the setlist, we launched that ball into the masses. I felt like we were literally throwing out something to remind everyone about all the good this life has to offer and how we can participate. While its bouncy trip around the sea of clapping hands was short-lived, as are most potentially harmful beach balls at concerts often are, to me, even if only one person caught a glimpse at one of those words, it would have an impact. And all of the words surely conjure up positivity. And what else were we really there for anyway?



As Lauren and I reflected on our most awesome weekend of music, re-connecting, cheap beverages, indulgent SNAKs and other mild debauchery, I think we were subconsciously energized by the fact that it had been years since we had spent time together and yet while we were up to very different things in our lives, we are both LIVING. We aren't just letting life happen. We affirmed one another's sense of centeredness and clarity. I was inspired by Lauren's account of a recent 4-day hike along the Appalachian Trail. To be one with nature, with just a pack on your back means you let your to-do list go for a few days and just let go. Let go of your car, your toilet and bed lamp. Let go of your fears. Fears of being eaten my a mountain lion, falling and breaking your ankle or running out of food. How often do we let ourselves truly let go like that? Just surrender to LIFE? It's saddening that our lives practically prevent us from being able to just unplug. We have to pay our bills and to do that we must go to work. I accept that. And I love my job and the things it affords me to buy. Like 7th row tickets to two DMB concerts. But for a moment, I escaped to the possibility of when/where/how to strip down, let go and live for living. What does that mean? What would I do? For how long could I escape? Maybe in the meantime, I can work out ways to fit this in daily? If you have any ideas, I'm listening!

I'm also going to continue to figure out a better way to introduce myself that will satisfy my intellectual needs but not scare off the person I'm meeting. And I'll remind myself that my car, my job, my geographical location and hair color doesn't define me.

In addition to being grateful for having a boat-load of fun this weekend, I'm also so joyful as it all caused me to actually say outloud, "We must never let our life prevent us from living." Now that I've vocalized it, from this moment on, I'm committed to not letting this happen. I simply haven't got the time. From where I sit, I believe I have just one life. I'm choosing to live it. Fully. Aware. Open-eyed and open-armed.

As Dave said it last night, "celebrate we will 'cause life is short but sweet for certain."

Inspired.
-mandy