The Last Words You Say Could Be The Last Words They Hear.
There’s a lot of music out there that when you hear it, it’s just beats and superficial lyrical content. Pop radio is so painful a lot of the time, and not to sound like a hipster, but trying to listen and keep up with it makes my ears want to bleed. But then every so often, there’s a song that comes out, and someone actually tells the truth, a story, and pours their emotions into said song. And the best part about it is it makes you think.
Lea Michele, for those who don’t know, is a musical artist that got her start on Fox’s TV show “Glee.” A lot of people anticipated her new album release, wondering if it would surpass her character flaws in Rachel Berry. Turns out it did, and in a shocking way. After the death of her co-star and significant other Corey Monteith (who she says she’s experienced “True Love” with) lost his battle to substance abuse, Michele released a song called “If You Say So” on her new album. Buzzfeed posted the lyrics and a link to the song here.
The reason I decided to touch base on this was because the message of the song was so powerful, and it made me revisit something I am not proud of, even though the song didn’t mimick the same sentiment as my thoughts. A week before the death of a very special friend, I remember calling him on the phone because his friends were looking for him and needed to get something from him. They had said he had been acting funny, and they couldn’t reach him. Being that I’m the resident guard/attack dog in my group of friends, somehow it was my task to call him and give him the “talking to.” I was my second job at the time, and I called him frustrated. I was barking things at him and scolding him for not answering his friends calls and that he needed to get in touch with them. We chatted for one more moment about other things and then hung up. Little did I know that was the last time I would ever talk to him.
People tend to not to think very much about the things they say and how they impact people (myself included). I am brutal on my co-workers and they are also jerks when they retaliate. We give eachother crap every day, and we don’t stop to think even though we are joking (most of the time), that we could potentially be doing damage to someone’s self-esteem even though it’s just us teasing. Friends get in petty arguments and don’t choose their words carefully, and could end up wounding someone’s self-image. And it makes me think – What if this is the last time I’m going to get to talk to that person? Grant it, I don’t always do that when I’m being an ass – sometimes I’m just a downright bitch and make people put up with that because “that’s just who I am.” And most people are used to it, since I’ve pretty much always been abrasive. But I could imagine that if someone actually took something seriously that I could have said, that would be a different story.
The song Lea put out made me think back to this moment, and that whole cliché saying of “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Even though her song was to her “lover,” it makes you think to the moment she had that conversation. That last conversation. Now, you could be a horrible person to a friend, talk about them behind their back, ect. even though you still care for them, and then what? What if that person walked out into the road, got hit by a car, and died, and you never got the chance to tell them that they were caring, or that they were one of your favorite people, despite how poorly you treated them? You’d feel pretty crappy, I would think. City and Colour’s front man Dallas Green used this line in his song “Body in a Box,” that “We celebrate the lives of the dead, It's like a man's best party, only happens when he dies.” And it’s true. So examine this: At funerals, we gather and tell stories about how awesome that person was, the funny times, things that you hold dear to you. We should do that more often in life. Maybe we should start celebrating eachother before we’re dead. Keep that in mind, next time. Say a kind thing, tell someone how you really feel. You won’t be disappointed later when you can’t.
-DETamie