It Might Not Mean Much to You...

I've written many times before about the importance of music in managing my mental health.  Music itself,  as well as song lyrics, have served as the soundtrack of my life for as long as I can remember.  I've used music to help me to celebrate, I listen to it when I need to find serenity, and it has provided me inspiration when I needed to pick myself up off the floor.  There are specific songs and artists that keep me emotionally connected to past experiences, and to important people in my life.  Sometimes a song just gets to me, and I listen to it, analyze it, process it, and mold it in my mind, until it becomes part of that life's soundtrack. 

You get to a point in life where you start to consider what your life has meant:  what purpose has my life served?  Has my life been meaningful?  What impact have I had?.. (I could go on...)  Our culture pounds us, relentlessly, to convince us that success equals money, status, and ladder climbing.  Success equals none of that. As with so much else in life, success is what makes you feels successful.  Fulfillment is what makes you feel fulfilled. 

There's a country song that was recently released, written and performed by Luke Combs, that has become one of those stop-n-think songs for me.  It's called Does to Me, and it describes moments in his life that might seem to others to be inconsequential, but to him they are the most important moments; the moments that define his life, and define him as a person.  Before creating the music video for the song, he reached out to fans to hear from them, their important moments... let me tell you, it will tug at your heart strings, and make you smile so big, tears will fall out of your eyes.  😂 I encourage you to listen, to watch, and to think about those presious moments in your own life. 

Now, I've never done this before, but because the lyrics to this song were so personal to Combs, I didn't feel like I could apply them to my own life or use the song on my soundtrack playlist, because they weren't about me or my life... so, I wrote new lyrics.  I re-wrote the lyrics to reflect those moments that may seem inconsequential to others, but mean the world to me. My words, hopefully, create the image of the moments that have defined my life, that have defined me as a person, and that have created my own life's successes.  

Does to Me (My Story)

I was the unathletic, always bleacher sitting kind

So I entered that race just to change my own mind

I was forty years young - 

and I'm still proud of that run

I was the only one applied to the job in this town

Now it's thirty years later, what I'm doing still counts

No I didn't climb the ladder

But I'm still helping these kids

And that might not mean much to you

But it does to me

So say I'm a middle of the road

Not much to show, underachieving, average Joe

But I'm an animal lover

a damn good mother

and I wear my heart on my sleeve

And that might not mean much to you

But it does to me

I'm the first one my kids call when they need an ear

I've been the crying shoulder for my friends through the years

I make a quiet difference

And I'm OK with that

I sat next to my dad as we said last goodbyes

Got to wipe the only tear that fell from his eye

Didn't know how life would change

But I kept shining his light

And that might not mean much to you

But it does to me

So say I'm a middle of the road

Not much to show, underachieving, average Joe

But I'm an animal lover

a damn good mother

and I wear my heart on my sleeve

And that might not mean much to you

But it does to me

There's an old ash tray that my granddaddy left me

My momma's sapphire ring, Dad's sense of loyalty

Two gold wedding bands, put in years and years before us

Well, that might not mean much to you

But it does to me

So say I'm a middle of the road

Not much to show, underachieving, average Joe

But I'm an animal lover

a damn good mother

and I wear my heart on my sleeve

And I'm a damn hard loving

One thing's for certain

I stand up for what I believe

And that might not mean much to you

But it does to me

If there's anything I've learned from our COVID year, it's that any of us may learn that we are not the person we thought we were, and that might not be a bad thing.  It might be that all of our priorities have changed and that might not be a bad thing, either.  Best of all, we may have realized that the little things are the big things... that might not mean much to you, but it does to me.