It’s always an interesting experience to perform songs that I wrote a couple of years ago, but that are only now reaching their audience.  “Do you get tired of playing the same song over and over again?” is a question that I feel artists get asked from time to time.  The answer, in my experience, is a resounding “No”.  But the reason for that is more humbling than it is noble.

I just got back to New York after an exciting six weeks in New Zealand sharing “Hiding So Long” and setting plans in motion for the future.  To me, performing a song requires one to live the song in the present – not necessarily to remember what the song meant when it was written, or what it’s supposed to be about – but to allow the experience of the song to offer something new, to be alive right NOW, to allow it to evoke something from within in the present.

And what struck me, as I performed the song day after day, and given that I often sing it while playing around with my guitar at home anyway, is how real the song still is to me.  The truth is, I feel like a different person from the one who wrote the song a couple years ago.  And, at the time of writing the song, I even felt I was writing it somewhat in hindsight.  But what the song continues to remind me, as it continues to feature in my daily life, is that the challenges of being human are never something we overcome and say goodbye to forever.  They arise every day in different ways, calling us to choose our response, to choose to either allow them to reveal new depths within us, or to struggle against them, deny them, react to them.

So I notice that the themes of Hiding So Long – self-betrayal, the denial of one’s own truth – still appear in my life in different ways.  The difference, now, is that I’m quite aware of my own choice in that, of my own participation in that drama: that the choice of really being true to my inspiration, rather than to my fear, though it may be a more intimidating path, is always available.

I remember hearing a vocal coach once say, “Learning to sing is circular. You keep coming back to the same issues again and again, but each time, you’re at a slightly higher level.”  It seems that it’s true of our learning in general.  Though it’s understandable that we often want to completely eradicate anything that bothers us in our lives, the reality is, we seem to move in spirals (hopefully, upward-moving spirals).  We meet the same challenges again and again, but each time with greater awareness and freedom than before.  And, hopefully, we remember that the point of arrival that we tend to strive toward, where we are free from all challenges, is called death; and that the journey itself is the vehicle of life.

Totally unrelated, here is a photo from a recent in-store performance at ESPRIT on 5^th Ave, with my acoustic trio.  Lots of fun, watching the rain pour down outside as we rocked out in the store window.

That anxiety-driven relationship to time, which today would say something like, Oh no, you have one less hour in which to get everything done!  What will you do?!?! is, to some degree, a part of our culture, and is also something that I find interesting to watch in myself.  It’s that same chasing-after-a-mirage-of-happiness energy of, When I get THIS I’ll be happy, or If only I could fix THAT then I could relax…in the end, it’s some form of striving after better circumstances or a better situation that always lies in the future, maybe just around the corner, that will finally allow us to be happy.

I don’t mean to judge it.  Only to question it.  I know if anyone’s guilty of this mentality, it’s me, so I’m certainly not trying to say I’m above it.  The recognition of this always-searching-for-more compulsion in myself was, in part, what I was writing about in Dying Daily. Even now, as I type, I can sense in the background a potential anxiety creeping in…Write your blog as fast as you can, you have a lot do and only 23 hours in which to do it! It’s absurd.  I’m enjoying writing, I don’t want to rush.  This whole habit of perpetual searching, looking for more, is absurd.  But it’s so human – maybe not ‘human nature’, but I think quite clearly ‘human habit’ in much of our culture.

So, I thought as I glanced at the time after waking and pondering the meaning of daylight saving time beginning today, what a perfect day – the 23-hour day in the US – to reflect upon our relationship with time.  Do our clocks serve us?  Or are they our masters?

The division between using time for life’s practicalities, and on the other hand, it dominating our lives, isn’t always a clear one.  But I think in the end it comes down to a simple question we can ask ourselves at any time: What matters most to me right now?  Is it getting everything done on our to-do lists?  Is it getting something over with, getting to some point where we can at last be at ease within ourselves?  Is it trying to get as much as we can, experience as much as we can, become as much as we can, hold onto as much as we can, and live for as long as we can, in the hope that this will make us more fulfilled?

Or, is it to make our inspiration primary, and all these other concerns secondary?  To make, above all else, our own core – our own truth – the force that really drives us and moves us.  When that’s primary, when that’s committed to, everything else falls into line behind it.  And the tick-tick-tick of the second hand is no longer the persistent badgering of a cold-hearted master, but a friendly and humorous reminder of the human tendency to betray ourselves today, in the hope that it will enable us to be more true to ourselves tomorrow.

ALL or NOTHING refers to the resolve that is required in order to know life’s true potential. ALL or NOTHING is about complete commitment to one’s truest voice, regardless of the risks or the consequences. It means to be willing to face whatever appears without any hope of avoiding it; it means to turn toward whatever is uncomfortable, rather than away from it; it means to let go of whatever is being held onto, and to leap into the unknown.

Conventional wisdom is defensive; it advocates never placing all our eggs in one basket, and this may be a useful strategy for practical matters. But true wisdom knows no strategy. True wisdom moves us to place all of our eggs in one basket in a heartbeat. It knows only what it is called to do, regardless of what may be ‘right’, ‘good’ or ‘sensible’.

What keeps us from accessing this wisdom is our strategies of running from or reacting to what appears. The primary choice we are faced with at any moment is between, on the one hand, avoiding whatever is unknown by following what is instead perceived as safe, comfortable, and defined; and, on the other hand, giving up our usual avoidance, and saying Yes to the unknown. The most critical turning points occur when this choice is taken to the extreme: when being true to ourselves requires us to put it all on the line, and the choice is one of ALL or NOTHING.

This creates an opportunity to allow life to become an exploration; an unfolding; a process of discovery. Instead of living defensively, there can be an openness to what life presents. We can allow ourselves to be touched by it, rather than insisting on protecting ourselves from it. Then, its true potential begins to become evident.

ALL or NOTHING might ring true about something particular happening in our lives – it may mean a determination to see an undertaking through until its conclusion, no matter what the obstacles, simply because you know you must. It may mean telling the truth to a person or a group of people under the most uncomfortable circumstances, regardless of the expected messy consequences, simply because, for you, it is the truth. It may mean being willing to expose yourself, without putting an ounce of energy into the strategies of hiding or protection, and to show yourself as who you are right now, without apology. All of it involves a willingness to meet the challenges of one’s own internal space of emotions and identity, and to look directly at whatever is revealed in this ongoing exploration.

No one can say what will be revealed, or where this embrace of the unknown will lead – only that where it leads will no longer be the result of a life driven by fear and a sense of lack or incompleteness. When this commitment to the core of who we are brings us face to face with all that we would rather avoid, it’s ALL or NOTHING. It’s an opportunity to commit so fully to what moves one most strongly, that in that commitment all that has been held onto – all our need to control, our need to know the outcome, our clinging to our identities – is dropped. In these situations, anything less than an absolute Yes, is simply a No. We can justify a decision to say No, to turn away and never know what lies on the other side. Or we can say Yes to what is moving us, and without any hope of escape, without any safety line, without looking back over our shoulders, walk right into the unknown. The choice is ours.

Ultimately, one’s entire life can become a total commitment to what is moving a person; an extended, resounding, ‘Yes’ to life and to all its challenges and discoveries. In letting go of our requirements for what we think we need to be free; in loosening our grip on the conditions that we think will finally give us happiness; we can give our ALL to life, right now, without further procrastination, and know that this freedom of saying Yes to life is a choice that is available at any moment.