Human nature involves desiring control in every aspect of life.
We meticulously plan and manipulate our lives to maintain any semblance of control possible, like adding our favorite songs and creating our master playlist. But life isn’t something you can compile and choose bits and pieces of; you go through all of it or none, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Our master playlist, though we put it together, is really on shuffle.
One day, you may be living out the days you’d hoped for most, Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings” being the soundtrack of your feelings. You spend time at the highest high, feeling as if there could be no better. Maybe you are finally seeing your hometown friends after a long semester, or taking a vacation with your favorite people. Life feels like it’s basked in a golden light; “Daylight” plays in the back of your head, and things are perfect.
Then you are whisked away to a new section of the playlist — maybe it’s even Phoebe Bridgers for a while. Eventually, it will circle through some intermediate Noah Kahan and Gracie Abrams, back to the top. Before you know it, Tate McRae’s “Cut My Hair” will be your anthem for a while. After all, she says it best with “I keep comin’ back, like a revolvin’ door.”
I started college after a gap semester, and returning in the spring was no easy feat. Making friends was hard, and the weather made getting out and about even harder sometimes. This point in my life, after coming from a bright and upbeat summer, was a really slow and hard time.
My next summer consisted of an amazing few months abroad; it felt like Hozier’s “Almost” or Swift’s “London Boy.” Now, I’m back in Boston for round two, and it’s still hard. Friendships are still fresh and developing, and new classes are picking up the pace. The playlist is circling back through the slower songs, and I’m back to “Ribs” and “Vienna.”
The point is, we can’t control which song will come or when it will play. All we can do is learn to accept the songs as they come and find a way to dance through it all. Life is long and tumultuous for a reason: that’s how we learn. When a song we don’t want comes on, there is no way around it. When this happens, we don’t stop dancing; we just make a new one, alter the steps, and carry on until the song can change again, and again, and again.
Some may think of this as hopeless, some exciting. Regardless of how we feel, it’s inevitable that things will happen and changes will continue to come.
We just have to remember to keep dancing; it’ll make life’s playlist far more bearable.
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