Measuring a life in CDs

I experienced a lovely bout of synesthesia the other day when Alanis Morisette's "Ironic" began playing on the "easy listening" radio station, being instantly transported to Monroeville, PA, in 1996. I was at a neighborhood pool with my best friend, on what I thought then was a hot day (I hadn't yet moved to SC). That song appealed to my teenage, existential crisis-side in just the right amount to make me wistful and thoughtful and, well, teenager-y even though I had absolutely nothing to be in an existential crisis about, or wistful (but thank goodness I was at least thoughtful). I can remember the wind blowing on my face as I stood in the pool, not wanting to move until the song was over. (If that made you barf, I understand and apologize.) I suppose that to the 1996 me, I felt the song beckoned me to consider my life beyond superficiality, as you must do in order to recognize irony. I don't know Alanis Morisette; perhaps she was just trying to write a hit that would open her career, but the me in 1996 cared about it. I also enjoyed "Mary Jane:" "Well it's full speed baby / In the wrong direction / There's a few more bruises / if that's the way / you insist on heading." I love that because she's implying your choice is what's wrong, not the universe.

We can remember and giggle and enjoy our little selves that existed before we encountered what would shape us as adults. Here's the measurements of parts of me according to CDs. Yes, CDs. Back when you could buy albums at the music store in the mall. I'm not going back to my cassettes of Paula Abdul and NKOTB and my mixed tapes for my Walkman. Those are too sacred for words.

My biology textbook was open on the left side of my bed (which was fully made), and my binder of notes sat dutifully on the right. The sun was shining through my two windows (I had a corner bedroom). I had made up my mind to make an A on my Honors Biology mid-term exam, and my method was simple: read through every chapter we had studied so far with my accompanying notes. And the Counting Crows took that journey with me in 1996. (And to lessen the suspense, I did make an A on that exam. I vividly remember my teacher smiling at me and giving me a thumbs up because, let's be real, everyone knows science isn't my intellectual forte.)

Even when you're untrained as a teenager, you know that music lyrics invite you in like a charming hostess, make a mess of your mind, and then abandon you to figure them out. These lyrics in "Rain King" always lifted a finger to me, grazing my mind: "I belong in the service of the queen / I belong anywhere but in between." From "Omaha": "Omaha somewhere in middle America / Get right to the heart of the matters / It's the heart that matters more / I think you better turn your ticket in / And get your money back at the door." From "Anna Begins": "but we're always changing / It does not bother me to say this isn't love / Because if you don't want to talk about it then it isn't love / and I'm guessing I'm going to have to live with that / but I'm sure there's something in a shade of gray / or something in between." And I really loved this from "Raining in Baltimore:" This circus is falling down on its knees / The big top is crumbling." For those of us who are thinkers, who note complexity and only see gray, who complicate and are complicated.

R.E.M.'s album "Automatic for the People", again memories around 1996. I can't recall very specific moments when listening to these songs, they just evoke a general sense of what I felt like during my freshman year in high school. From "Try Not To Breathe:" "I will try not to breathe. / This decision is mine. I have lived a full life / And these are the eyes that I want you to remember." From "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite:" "The cat in the hat came back, wreaked a lot of havoc on the way / Always had a smile and a reason to pretend / But their world has flat backgrounds and little need to sleep but to dream." From "Nightswimming:" "Nightswimming, / Remembering that night / September's coming too soon / I'm pining for the moon / And what if there were two / Side by side in orbit around the fairest sun? / The bright tide forever drawn / Could not describe nightswimming / You, I thought I knew you / You, I cannot judge / You, I thought you knew me." And everyone knows "Everybody Hurts," which I think sings in its simplicity: "Sometimes everything is wrong / Now it's time to sing along / When your day is night alone." You're a jerk if you find yourself haughtily rejecting this song.

Again, 1995-1996 for me, a freshman in high school. I don't keep up much (not at all) with Jewel these days, but I vividly remember going to Monroeville Mall with my best friend and deciding to buy this new album. Everyone (well, people I knew) sang along to "You Were Meant For Me." The song "Pieces of You" is very powerful, particularly for 1995 in my opinion. Brief, vague descriptions (She's a pretty girl, she's an ugly girl, you say he's a faggot, you say he's a Jew) elicit the same direct question: "Do you hate him / 'Cause he's pieces of you?" I still love this. You can't hate others without hating yourself. Her rawness is moving. And "Foolish Games:" "I watched from my window / Always felt I was outside looking in on you. / [...] You were fashionably sensitive / But too cool to care. / [...] Well in case you failed to notice / In case you failed to see / This is my heart bleeding before you / This is me down on my knees and / These foolish games are tearing me apart / And your thoughtless words are breaking my heart." How much of what we do to others is putting on airs? Acting a part we've seen? When we might do well to remember that we're dealing with each other, alive, warm, breathing. And there are consequences.

I still experience a twinge of a love affair with Dave Matthews. This album makes me feel engulfed in 1997-1999 after I moved to South Carolina. The dance team I was on, the Dazzlers, performed to "Two Step": "Celebrate we will / Because life is short but sweet for / certain / We're climbing two by two / To be sure these days continue / These things we cannot change." I still remember many of the dance steps in our routine. "So Much To Say:" "I find sometimes it's easy to be myself / sometimes I find it's better to be somebody else." Perfect for a teenager, but it's also so true for those of us who continue to be multi-faceted. And "Crash Into Me:" "Lost for you I'm so lost for you." That song is still endearing to me despite it being a bit explicit because I think it rather beautifully captures the spirit and angst and fast pace of adolescence trying in vain to figure out adulthood but falling miserably short.

And at 32, the following is what I think when I hear all of the music listed above:

• "Ironic": wow, how did she pick some of the worst examples of irony ever? "It's like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife?" Who cares about that?
• I remember Jewel saying in an interview that she listened to her own "Pieces of Me" album and thought she sounded like Kermit the Frog. I sort of agreed.
• I still enjoy hearing "Crash Into Me" and laughing about boys I had crushes on compared to the much more mature, deep love that comes with 13 years of marriage. Clearly the boy in the song lacks that perspective, but that's why it's so endearing to me and I smile when I hear this song.
• I still don't know what in the world some of these songs are about, but that's the point.
• I can be 15 forever as long as I have these albums (and I do still have them). I think one result of 90's music pointed out the veil that my blog is named after, not necessarily suggesting there is anything underneath it, but perhaps so, if you can at least recognize that there is a veil. The rest is up to you. Don't drown in it.
• I'm clearly no music expert.
• I may have just really embarrassed myself by revealing these music choices.

Embarrass yourself by joining in the fun! Share how you would measure your own life in CDs.

A Living Sacrifice

I am a middle-class, white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes living in America in the 21st century. I know nothing of any type of adversity. Lots of you reading this are exactly the same.

We live in terms of "in here" and "out there," where real worldly struggles never knock on our doors, and so many people never develop the empathy to understand, to care, or to act. I suppose my life of leisure is why wars were fought in the last century,  but that can never excuse apathy.

We certainly can't imagine a society in the first world in which girls are refused an education. And so many people living in first-world countries take education forgranted. When my students were being especially bratty and whiny, I would ask them, "Did you get shot by the government on the bus coming to school today? Do you come to a school with heating and food?" Yeah, I'm that girl. And I think people who become annoyed by those comments know deep down that I'm right.

Because they could never imagine how other people struggle in this world. As my husband says, we see in Pakistan and Afghanistan what our world would look like if we literally were still trying to live by the Bible.

As I read an excerpt from Malala Yousafzai's memoir, I realized that her father was a political activist. As in, not just talking or writing or blogging or Facebooking or Twittering or even Tweeting, but in acting. As Dr. King often taught, Malala's father was directly involved in provoking creative tension. Society will not change without tension, the kind of tension that creates a new possibility. Forcing people to take notice, to empathize, and the hardest of all requests, to change. In this case, that meant sending his daughter to school in spite of what that might incite.

And it suddenly crystallized in my brain: he knew that she could be murdered. Her father. Knew that. And she went to school anyway. He let her. He told her to. She wanted to.

It literally took my breath away. Is that insanity? Is that cruelty? Or is that faith?

Who of us would put our children's lives on the line for the sake of right? Which of our children would volunteer to go? (The bigger picture here is that we are directed to do this according to our Christian faith, not suggested to as my questions might imply, but I can't even come close to discussing that right now.)

Malala stated in a recent NPR interview that she is no longer scared of death because she has already faced it. However, her father asserted that, "I believe that one should live for a cause which is greater than him. Even if I die, I will continue my campaign, but I will not put her life at stake. That's clear."

He states that he wants to go back to their home in Pakistan because he is needed there and because of the work left to be accomplished, but it seems clear that he's also unwilling to agree to put his own daughter at risk. Which is tricky when you're campaigning for equality. At what point does the personal replace the ideal?

It's one thing to decide that for your own life. The examples throughout history are powerful and still timely. Read "The Letter." King seems to somehow have known he would not live long, and certainly his choices affected his family. But his own children's lives were not the ones on the line. His baby did not sit in jail with him or in his stead. Of course his home was bombed so they were certainly in danger, but he did not carry them to his protests.

As strange as this might sound, I want to read a memoir from Malala's father. How does a person come to decide that in his own struggle between accepting the limits of his world and confronting them, he will potentially ask his children to pay the price?

And of course the broader, more difficult question remains: was it worth it? If Malala were dead right now, have any changes advanced enough to make the sacrifice worthwhile? Or are we called simply to try? One could argue that Dr. King's work still is not complete. We witnessed the Supreme Court striking down part of the Voting Rights Act. States with a history of voting discrimination are no longer required to obtain approval prior to enacting changes in voting procedures (such as redistricting or voter identification laws) because, as Chief Justice John Roberts asserted, "Our country has changed."

Is it that simple? The issue isn't black or white, male or female. As has been stated over and over throughout history, we should all be concerned when we witness any sort of discrimination because at some point in the future, it could be your own rights on the line.

Some people walk this Earth who develop a sense of all-or-nothing, such as King, Mandela, Jesus, Socrates, Bonhoeffer: they come to the realization that they either fight for the truth or accept death because there is no room for them for a halfway life. Ziauddin Yousafzai includes his daughter in this fight, and she agrees. Could he educate her in private while pushing for freedom and equal rights? Do you say to the people you're fighting for, "This issue is important, but is only worth so much?" For we all know that our children are the greatest sacrifice. But our children are also worth everything good that we fight for.