Chronic Illness Playlist: Great Big Sea's "Here and Now"
Over the weeks I have chosen songs that tend to focus on the bad feelings associated with having chronic illness. There are plenty of those bad feelings to focus on, but this week I wanted to try to pick a more positive song. I have chosen one of the many of the fantastic songs by the band Great Big Sea called "Here and Now."
This song compels me to want to live a positive life and to use the time I have wisely. This song reflects the message I am trying to convey in my poetry and in the way I live in general, that you only have so much time and you only get one life so you can chose to live in darkness or chose to find the bright side of that darkness.
As someone with chronic illness I find that I can tell how precious life is more than other people because I know just how quickly things can go downhill. This song is saying that you never know when your life is going to end "we are already dying out", so we must make the most of the time we do have. I have to make the most of the times when I feel good because I never know when I am going to be in too much pain or too weak to do anything. I need to remember that even when I am in too much pain that this is the only life I will ever live so I have to make the best of every single moment.
This song mentions "the dying of the light" which for those of you who don't know much about poetry, is a line from the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. The poem is saying that we must never take life for granted, we must fight every day to stay alive, we must "rage against the dying of the light." Here and Now by Great Big Sea is saying the same thing. Make the most of every moment you are alive, see how precious life is and do not take time for granted.
Here are the lyrics:
Here and Now by Great Big Sea
The sun must set to rise The light will leave your eyes again Then breaking like morning's dawn Does summer feel the winter come The hardest part of life Is to live while you're alive my friend So sing an unwritten song Or repent for the deeds you left undone This is Here This is Now It's the moment that we live for And we just can't live without It's all clear to me now We've already started dying And our time is running out Oh, Right Now Time is ours to steal She's a secret to reveal my friend And when your children have all grown You'll wait by the window And wish them all back home Walk a little further off the beaten path And we'll drive on even if we get there last Our backs against the wall And we will lunge and bite And we'll rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light
To hear the song click the tab "chronic illness playlist" and you can listen to this and all of the other songs I have chosen throughout the week. I had to post a youtube video of this song because I could not find it on the spotify player so I apologize for the quality. If you have spotify you can find that song on there normaly so I don't know why I couldn't here.
Bonus: I read Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night".
