My Heart Is Always Singing
When I read Dawud’s post about the songs in his heart, I knew I was a goner. My heart is always singing. It’s the way I wake up. It’s the way I go through my day. It’s the way I think of my friends. It’s my life.
Sometimes I think that everything I know has been set to music somewhere.
Right Outta Nowhere
by Christine Kane
I was walking with Richard in London. We were talking about his international travel, my international travel, my first trip to the UK, his trips to visit my office, and my bicoastal commute.
“In the last year,” I said to this lifelong friend, “the longest time I’ve been home is 21 days. Once I was gone for 63 nights. I have a “home” at home, another at Peg’s, and several in small hotels in cities like this. What d’ya make of it?” I was walking half-backwards to see him as I spoke.
He pondered. Then he said, “I think it means, you don’t want one home anywhere.”
I turned to walk beside him, keeping pace and thinking his thought. Then I turned back to say, “Could be, yet when I try it on, it feels more right to say ‘I want to live everywhere!’ ”
“Oh dear,” my dear friend remarked. “That is you, spot on. Takes courage, that.”
We think of courage as a loud battle, but in my life it’s never been a fight. It’s been a waking up to something that isn’t right.
When courage finally comes you never see it coming.
Just three years before that walk, I’d been hopelessly lost about life. I’d gotten caught in trying different clothes and dfferent shoes to figure out how to walk the road that everyone else was walking. I’d tried desperately, valiantly — with amazing resilience — to remake myself to fit the success story.
Some people got a lot to prove and that’s the way I used to be.
From the first misstep I took, I lived in my head, over-analyzing At the same time, I believed I wasn’t good enough, yet I thought that I could prove my value by changing who I am. Where’s the logic there? Look again —> prove the value of who I am by changing it?
Disconnected from my head, my heart knew I was moving in the wrong direction. It took a chance at being me again. My heart understood that I needed my own shores to find my place to stand. That’s where the courage came in.
Dream and the way will be clear.
Pray and the angels will hear.
Leap and the net will appear.
When my heart and head came back together, those shoes that fit were walking on a road away from trying to change myself to prove my value. It wasn’t easy, but it felt better.
And I could be sure that the folks who met me . . . met me, and those who like me . . . like me.
So when people ask me about how to find their way, I point them to Christine’s song a song in my heart and tell them what it says . . .
Right outta nowhere
Open your heart, believe in everything
And you’re going somewhere.
And all you need to know is that you’re free.
I had asked Richard before I ever got to the UK, “When I get to London on business, will you take me around to all of the publishers?” I’d been asking him for 6 years, before my plane actually landed.
I had to learn that I was free to go.
Right outta nowhere, you open your heart, have faith in everything
And you you’re going somewhere.
And all you need to know
Is that you’re free
to go.
Thank you, Christine, for saying it so beautifully.
Open your heart, believe in everything — especially yourself.
That’s how you get to where you want to go.
right outa nowhere describes my experience at the show yesterday 🙂
When you put your heart in it, it’ll take you anywhere.
gp in montana
Hi GP!
That sounds like what you described exactly. A heart with wings.
It’s a special song. I like it from the beginning. Then we got to hear Christine talk about it before she sang it at SOBCon. Now you’re part of it and it’s even more special to me.
Hey guys
As a less-than-10 year old kid, I remember sending out a postcard to answer a quiz that appeared in a popular weekly storybook.
One of the questions was:
What would a slave or a prisoner want more?
A. Love B. Freedom
Even then, I knew it was freedom. I know it ‘more’ now, since I have seen what it means to be a slave for about 20 years.
I could not love anyone since I didn’t have the freedom to love myself. I didn’t trust anyone, I didn’t have any kind of faith.
It’s different today. I just let it go. I know that I can only do so much. That’s the kind of faith I carry–to be confident enough to give up. I know I have the freedom so long as I have the faith.
Thanks for bringing this up guys, and Christine… how wonderfully written.
Zakman,
You have the wisdom of experience and the heart of one who has lived. I hear your words and the depth behind them.
They are simple, elegant, and so valuable.
I hold this comment dear.
This is so beautiful, Liz! I cannot make myself leave your blog today… the song fits here…
Christine has a wonderful voice: a bit bitter, a bit sad and so joyful!
Hi Mihaela,
It’s hard to miss with Christine singing. She’s one of my heroes. I so admire her. 🙂
WOW! Christine wrote about me! How did she know that I decided to pack up and leave my secure tenured job in the midwest to move to the ocean which had always been my dream? Thanks Liz for sharing this link.
Hi Delaney!
That’s what makes Christine wonderful. She’s magic!
Hi Liz, thanks for sharing this so openly. It gives courage to those of us still faltering towards our true path. And thanks for the link to Christine’s song too – it was a beautiful, mellow listen.
In a nice bit of synchronicity Hilda Carroll’s current thought for the week at Living Out Loud (where this started) is “Leap, and the net shall appear…”
Joanna
Hi Joanna,
Leap and the net will appear is a Zen Buddhist saying, and it’s one of my favorites, especially the way that Christine sings it.
Sometimes I think it’s courage. Sometimes I think it’s surrendering. Maybe they mean the same thing.
Wow! Thanks for this gorgeous post, Liz! I just now returned from teaching all weekend, and now I’m all teary. I so appreciate your own courage and how you relate it to the lyrics. That’s why I write songs at all, and you’ve touched me deeply!
Christine,
Blame it all on Liz. She has this uncanny ability to make people teary.
“Right Outta Nowhere” is so touching… that is song.
The “leap and the net will appear” brought back thoughts about what I heard in a self-help group:
You’re driving at night, and the headlights of your car can only show you 200 feet ahead. But you keep driving.
Oh Christine.
You hero! Your gorgeous song is so deep in my head and heart. Just like you are. I can’t believe I even got to know you. I’m one lucky girl. 🙂
Zakman,
What a perfect thought to add to the conversation. I’ve been on that road so many times before. 🙂