I love this song by John Denver. It is so much who I am. There are times that I am higher than an eagle, and then there are times that I crash. My sister insists that I am bi-polar. I insist that I am just alive and some people are just like that.
I love it when I fly like an eagle. And it doesn’t take much to send me soaring above the clouds. A compliment will do it, completing a simple task sometimes will do it. Usually it involves breathing deep. If I breathe then I get high, almost giddy.
Oh, and too, when you’re flying you have only to look up. Looking up makes me high. Looking at the tree tops, the sun, the moon, the stars, even airplanes takes me places in my mind. Sometimes when we go camping we count the number of airplanes that are flying over. We don’t live anywhere near an airport so usually the airplanes are very high. It is so cool to look in the night sky and try to decide if that is a star or an airplane. Ha!
Trying to decide who you are in life is such a challenge. There are those who are blessed to know early and often what they were meant to do on this earth. Then there are those who struggle through life trying to decide where they need to be. I was one of those people. And every time I look back I get angry that I didn’t realize at 11 years old who I was. I went my whole life not being true to myself, to who I was, to what I was meant to do. And it was right under my nose. I used to say that I needed someone to point me in the right direction and push. I didn’t need that. Deep down I knew who I was, and what I was meant to do. But in “Looking for Space” the whole song is about trying to find out who we are and where we are.
Our lives are so hard to understand. Most of us just want to know that we are on the right path. And aren’t we? Aren’t we where we’re supposed to be? I mean, we made the choices in our lives. No one can make all of the decisions for us, can they? I know there are some parents out there who want to mold their children in who they want them to be. But at some point in time your parents can’t tell you anymore. I remember there was a time when I really needed my mother to tell me what to do. But she was very ill, close to death. I’ll never forget when she told me “I can’t help you.” I knew she couldn’t. But I wanted her to look at me and make it all better. But it was at that time I realized that I had to do what was right for me. It wasn’t pretty but I got through it.
A lot of people will tell you that life is about the journey, not the destination. An eagle doesn’t consider the destination. He knows that he’ll land, either in a tree, or on a cliff, near the water. He knows where his chicks are but aside from that he doesn’t consider the landing. He does consider where he’s going to get his next meal. He does consider where he will rest. And in our journey we consider the day-to-day, supposed tedium of life. But in retrospect, that’s what we’ll look back on and say “hey, I made it”, or “hey, that wasn’t so bad”. We can’t be in the moment and say “I’ve arrived!” We can say that though back at our nest.
The next line of the song, “sometimes I’m deep in despair” is also about my life. Many people don’t realize that what goes up must come down. And some people just come down hard. A lot of people go down further than others. I used to sing the song “The Tears of a Clown” because I would cry so often. Friends never realized that I cried so much. But I had to. It was the only way to cleanse my soul. Of course, years later I would tell you it was because my hormones were so messed up. But originally I just thought it was my moods, what my sister called me being bi-polar. But all of that pent-up energy has to go somewhere and sometimes it came out of me through tears, through despair. But that made me the person that I was.
I look at my daughter now and realize she is just like that. So many people compliment her to me. They tell me how sweet she is. And she is. Or they will tell me that she has the most beautiful smile, or that she is smiling all the time. And she does. Until she doesn’t. I see her tears. I see her despair. And I know that even if I could help her, I wouldn’t. Because it is only in dealing with the desperation that you learn how to fly, like an eagle.