It's A Beautiful Day

The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
But there's no room
No space to rent in this town

You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere...

It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away

...

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out

It's a beautiful day

Few things happen in life to which a U2 song doesn't speak.  I've talked about this before.  But notwithstanding these fine lyrics from the my favorite band, the last few weeks just haven't felt very beautiful to me. 

As you know by now, my brother was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago.  After we recovered from the initial diagnosis, we found out that the outlook going forward might be a bumpier ride than we had hoped.  It isn't the worst case scenario, but it's also not the best.

And it's going to be a long ride.

Meanwhile, my wife and I moved to Nashville from St. Louis five years ago and the market hasn't recovered well enough so that we can sell our former house there.  We just found out that our renters there, who we thought might ultimately buy it from us, won't even be renewing their lease and actually want to end it early.

The company where my wife works is suddenly looking unstable, after she just had to switch jobs a few months ago for the same reason.

After a solid six months of non-stop car problems the second half of 2011, a check engine light inexplicably appeared on our new one, which we had just had inspected by our mechanic without incident. 

All of these things happened recently, but three of the four came on the exact same day:  March 15.

Suffice to say my family and I may have had the second worst Ides of March in recorded history.

Literary references aside, one other part of that day sticks out.  When I went for a morning walk with my brother on the morning of the 15th, he told me something I'll remember for the rest of my life.

He never used to notice the birds chirping in the morning, he said. Since his diagnosis, he does. It's something simple he used to take for granted.  But if cancer has granted him nothing else, it's to enjoy the beauty of life around him that he once overlooked.

Funny, but until he said something about those birds, I didn't notice them either.  It was a beautiful day, and I was letting it get away.

His story made me think not only of one of my favorite U2 songs, but also of the things in life I've taken for granted lately.

No one forces any of you to read this space, but you're here, allowing me in ever-increasing numbers to live out my dream and be my sounding board during times like this.  I have no constitutional entitlment to living in a city I love and making a decent living in it, but here I am.

Not everyone is so lucky. Five years ago, when I was stuck working 70 hours a week for demanding bosses in a job and city I hated, I would have given almost anything to face a stressful work day in the job and town I currently enjoy.

But it's easy to lose perspective of things like that.

Today, the birds sing.  The sun shines. It sets and returns tomorrow. And more often than not, I don't even notice.

A chirping bird might not seem like much when life is falling down around you.  But its symptomatic of a greater truth. Despite its imperfection, the world is filled with beauty, if only we will look for it.

Someone around you loves you, warts and all.  Someone else around you loves you more than you know, but doesn't know how to say so. 

There is some bigger purpose that you care about more than yourself.  Through struggles beyond what seems fair, love overcomes, because God  created no force more powerful.

These are the things that matter.

When life feels like more than you or I can handle, there is someone who will listen, who has been through something like it before.

At some point, someone did you a favor for no expectation of a return, just because it was the right thing to do. Someone else forgave you for something stupid you did, and that mistake you learned from made you better for the experience.

And even on a day when we feel like life's garbage dump, someone around us celebrates something wonderful in their own seperate world.  And some day, we will too.

Our problems are just a drop in the bucket of life.  It's tapestry is greater and more beautiful than our temporary circumstance.

What we don't have, we don't need it now.  What we don't know, we can feel it somehow.

It's a beautiful day. 

Don't let it get away.