Do you realize
That you have the most beautiful face?

“I like this song.”  This was the announcement made by my nephew while we were on a recent road trip. I nodded in agreement.

In an attempt to make the long journey seem faster, we elected to take turns playing DJ using Spotify. Knowing full well that the little guy is both fidgety and really tunes into music, the rest of us big kids— you know, the ones over 40 years old—encouraged him to choose first. But he was shy at first, so we pivoted off a conversation about last month’s Boston Calling music festival. The family had gone and there had been a performance by The Flaming Lips.  I put on one of their most popular songs, one I hadn’t heard in over a decade but knew quite well.

Do you realize
We’re floating in space?

“But it is also kind of a sad song.” This pronouncement was a bit more surprising, but one that I couldn’t disagree with. I nodded in agreement.  

The music had barely started but my nephew already knew where it was headed. And this was when I understood that I was far from introducing something new to the young generation—and from this vantage point, I had two thoughts: One, that his parents were raising him well. The second was that this was a pretty bare-boned observation for an 11-year-old to be making. I say this because my brain had already cartwheeled through the lyrics that were to come. He was right; for those who are not familiar, Do You Realize?? isn’t just a big, blue-sky melody with care-free thoughts contained within. 

Do you realize

That happiness makes you cry?

“It’s kind of…um…” my nephew was searching for the word, while continuing to mentally walk alongside the song, “it’s…. it’s bittersweet.”  He said it as a declaration and put emphasis on the second syllable. 

Do you realize

That everyone you know someday will die?

I continued to drive. He was totally right, but I also wondered if he would stay on this line of thinking and challenge us to answer hard, practically unanswerable questions. The Flaming Lips song convers very elemental aspects of life while using very good word economy. And the melody is very easy to mindlessly slip into—so you’d be forgiven if you imagined that little kids would attach themselves to only that part and disregard the words. Not our young traveler. He understood that there was something else running through the song. Something bittersweet.  

Luckily for us, he did not push the subject. We all allowed his comments to hang in the air, and simply continued to let the music play. As it turns out I would stay stuck on this old song for days, laughing to myself about how such a small person who often seems only interested in his Nintendo Switch could suddenly make a bunch of jaded old people feel so present.

It’s not a new or novel concept to stumble upon moments when the youngest of us humans manage to shock us old people. How they effortlessly pull our heads out of the sand and command attention by doing or saying something deceptively simple. The older I get, the more astounded I become at my own habit of getting bogged down by administrative life bullshit. Sure, I’d like to think that my eyes remain ever-fixed on the horizon and I am cognizant of the ephemeral nature of things…but the paper cuts of every day can make it tough.  

“Being an adult sucks!” This was the comment made just days before by the father of my nephew. I had nodded in vigorous agreement.

Of course, for many reasons this statement is not true…but for many others, it is indeed a most fitting and emotionally satisfying proclamation to make. And when you’re talking with other adults who of course are dealing with the same flavors of struggle, the validation that you get back is incredibly reassuring. These are the conversations that you don’t have while the kid is in the car. 

The older I get, the more I find myself inclining to be more rigid about things. I see it happening and I don’t like it. I also find great irony in the inflexibility because in my experience, as you get older, life becomes more and more complicated. Details to sort through multiply. It becomes complicated in a way that demands you to have an unending supply of flexibility on your part. It’s a wild paradox that my brain tends to get stuck upon. 

But then I come back to that song. And in the days since, I have been playing it probably more than I probably ever had in my life.

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes

Let them know you realize that life goes fast

The month has been more than filled with life tasks that demanded my full attention. The days that left me wanting nothing more than a nap to recharge my battery once the clock hit 5PM. But even as work was busy, I did have moments interspersed with great joy. The kind that you can’t always plan on, the kind that just kind of pops up around the chaos. Just like how in the car, we moved on from The Flaming Lips song, and chose more upbeat earworm picks like Everybody Wants to Rule the World or Here Comes The Hotstepper. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it, but by the time we had reached our destination, we’d effectively made a holistic tour of the sonic universe. Singing out loud together and feeling like we’d already been to where we were going.

It’s hard to make the good things last

You realize the sun doesn’t go down

It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round