The song LIVE IT FOR TODAY was inspired by my beautiful niece. After serving in the army in the Middle East where she was on call for ‘Booty Duty’ (securing women safely from one place to another), she decided to seize the opportunity and get a college degree on full scholarship.
I had the pleasure of escorting her to Drexel University and sat in on her college interview! Meanwhile her mother came down to Philadelphia to be with us.
While sitting together before dinner, she reached across the table placing her healing hands on her daughter’s neck and began to massage her. Instantly she located a lump in the throat area. It was not visible to the naked eye. With a concerned tone, she told her daughter to go straight to the doctor and get it checked. She kept saying ‘Immediately, this is not good.’ Being a nurse, she knew the lump could be cancerous. So my niece’s plans of attending college were mired by throat cancer. The good news is that after having her thyroid removed and some treatment, a year later she was able to follow her dream and is now mid way to graduation! And so it goes… you can see the healing hands of the Divine in this.
From a mother’s touch to early detection and now a healthier today. Thus the title for this song. LIVE IT FOR TODAY.
However, while writing the piece the lyrics began to express something quite different. So interesting how you can start with one idea and end up with quite another. The song started to express through the lenses with which I witness my own life unfolding, and the timelessness between changing seasons. Seems like my niece’s predicament brought up my own personal relationship with ‘dying’ and death. After all, aren’t we all dying every day? One day past, never to come again? Aren’t we all set to a destiny clock ticking away as each birth year comes and the numbers climb? … Or do they climb at all? And are we from a wider perspective more likely spiraling inward, round and round so that no matter what ‘happens’ in this our life, on some level, we, our soul as consciousness are’ going’ nowhere at all. What a conundrum between what we call ‘ life’ and what we call ‘death’. What a puzzling wonder!
All these messages hidden yet made clear by the very nature of death and dying in Mother nature’s own beginning and endless cycles. Here, where even the visibly ‘dead’ corn stalks of destiny clocking in end of life for dying autumn leaves … is this really finite death? … Or more likely a new configuration in motion yet unseen? Round and round… What a trick to the naked eye! Ha! And my own clarity at once revealed.
“If one thing becomes another, that’s how I know, it’s just that clear. I’ll Always Be here.”
LYRICS TO ‘LIVE IT FOR TODAY’
I can feel it coming on How the day does claim it Way too young to be this way How to shake this?
Living life this way not caring why these leaves are turning Baseless on a whim beyond the need to feel I’m growing So grateful to be here just living for today I’m living for today
Summers come, oh how they go For waves do not tarry Autumn changes Winter’s song into Spring’s awakening
‘Round and round it goes With no beginnings there’s no endings Just tampered by a snow under a solstice of repentance There’s nothing left to fear just living for today I”m living for today
Take away this house and all that I hold dear ‘Cause I’m going nowhere I’m going be here Take away this life and all its mess ups too If one thing becomes another That’s how I know It’s just that clear I’ll always I’ll always be here I’m living for today
Not for tomorrow or even next year But live it for, live it for today ~
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