What's in a Song?

Today I am grateful for ears to hear the music I love and the songs that connect me with specific memories and experiences. Many songs have been part of my journey.

I am also grateful for the messages and messengers who helped me confront my alcoholism.

One such song is the Eagles' "Already Gone."  This song used to be a "drinking song" for me. It was my goal when I went out. I wanted to be "already gone," meaning drunk, wasted, numb. But out of the destructive behavior and an unhealthy twist on that song emerged a line that is one of my absolute favorite lines from any song. That line is: "So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key." It is profoundly simple and was my truth for years. I was chained in a life going down the wrong path and I was stuck on that path.

In fact, when I was 15 years old I came across this phrase: "The chains of alcohol are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." I don't remember where I heard it, but I wrote it on a little piece of paper and put it on the mirror in the room I shared with my sister. At 15 I already knew that there was something going on with the way I drank alcohol and what it did to me.

That quote from my teen years and the favorite line from an old Eagles song helped me first recognize the chains I was bound in and then helped me find the key to release them.

Today I am unchained and continuing to emerge. And when I start to get burdened by those real and imaginary chains I can create, I know where to find the key.

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