...Help From My Friends....

Blogger is still randomly inserting underlines. Ignore!

I feel very 1967 these days. I have enjoyed multiple nights of cross-legged-on-the-floor-listening-to-records, comfortable at home with my mother, my friends, and my pets. Very few moments in life yield an "in the moment" feeling, but recently, I've been able to tap into that sensation and see the connection between people without over analyzing ulterior motives. I marvel at the extraordinary efforts that some people will make to create and maintain friendships, to connect, and while I've never had many friends, the ones I DO have are the best of the best.


I once became the black sheep of a corporate meeting by commenting about a marketing strategy for "connected customers", saying something along the lines of, "the greatest tragedy of mankind is that we are infinitely connected, but oftentimes feel so isolated." The reaction I got was something like this: BLINK BLINK, BLINK BLINK, moving on.

The skeptic in me usually adds a tagline every time I feel connected, saying "yes, but it's fleeting." The truth in this, that moments and even deep connections may very well be temporary, used to make me sad. These days I look back on everything in my life that meant something and realize that the most worthwhile, and most transcendent were brief but bold, and while I may be nostalgic, it no longer causes despondency.

Maybe its a little dark, but it makes sense to me that as death is an integral part of life and renewal, the very notion of our own mortality makes everything brief, and somehow then...brighter, bigger. Each connection that occurs, dies, is reborn, is changed...these connections are no less real or immense simply because of their brevity.

It reminds me of the first scene I remember openly crying during...and you can probably guess, it had to do with the sentiment attached to a vehicle. It's a scene from The Wonder Years, when their trusty Dodge Station Wagon* finally gives up the ghost. The montage following broke my heart when I first watched, somewhere in 1988. I watch it now and realize it's because I saw that impermanence is unavoidable, and that somewhere years down the road, we will all play montages like this one. Maybe that's why I connect with the movie Stand By Me also, because it makes it clear that even though these particular relationships were momentary, it made them no less important. They were epic. (Pertinent scene starts at 3:20 in the clip below).  And yes....the Joe Cocker version of "With a Little Help From my Friends" is on my Top Ten Best Covers List.

I'm not saying there isn't a permanence that can exist, I have lifelong relationships.  Just that...the small moments existing in transitory interactions mean just as much as the grand gestures elsewhere.  Maybe more.


So in this moment of nostalgia, I'd like to state a simple fact: the gestures of connection, of support, of honesty, of simple and silly entertainment, of laughter...these are immense, immeasurable moments for me. Fleeting or not, they have left indelible marks. These will replay in my ever growing montage. I am better for it, each day, with a little help from my friends.




Skeptically Yours.




*the Skeptic in me HAS to point out  that the sign on the Dodge says '63, but the car itself is a '68, and that Kevin refers to it as "9 years old" which would have made it a '60.  Continuity aside, it's a DAMNED good scene.  Scriptwriters largely aren't car people. Or apparently..."fact" or "math" people.