Take the map and point to anywhere... I don't care.
Summertime,
Summertime
Brought me back to thinking you were mine
All those times.
We laid it down and left it all behind,
We were blind.
Oh, the summertime.
We could ride, we could ride.
Take my hand and watch the world go by.
Laugh or cry.
Well we need to try, get off the line, time to fly.
Oh, the summertime.
Go on ahead and let it fade away.
No looking back you know the past will stay.
It's you and me, we could get out of here.
Jump in and go and we could drive for years.
We could feel alive...
Here we are, here we are,
windows down we see a falling star.
Stop the car.
Waiting for nothing but our beating hearts, going far.
Oh, the summertime.
So feel the air, feel the air,
take the map and point to anywhere.
I don't care. Fingers through your hair,
the sky I've seen is blue and green.
Oh, the summertime.
Driving away, leaving it all behind.
Driving away, just driving away.
I was in my car, on the way home from a piano lesson, when I stopped to really contemplate the words to the above. It hit me hard, too. I didn't know why, at first. Maybe it was in the way it talks about being so carefree, so in love, so full of life, so ready to be spontaneous, to do anything.
But, I've been contemplating my life, too, and these words fit with what I want so closely that this song almost breathes for me, when I listen to it...
waiting for nothing but our beating hearts, going far
I can't help but think about the future, and what will come from it. I can't help but think that all I want in life are the things that are hardest to get, and yet the most rewarding. And then I think about the years I've spent and realize that I have had so much of what I thought I had to wait for.
And I thought too about this year, and next, and this summer. It's the last one we all get to do what we've become accustomed to. To live life with those so close to us that we know their next thought, their personality, their dreams. And it will be the last time that we get to see each other, to be this close, to have what we've taken for granted for so long, treated so lightly because we thought that it would last forever.
And the end of the song... what we'll have to do. Driving away, leaving it all behind. In the song, it gets louder there, more energetic for a moment, as if excitement overrides what is being said. But then, too it falls, and we realize what we are going to miss.
Oddly enough, after this song, I had a conversation with a good friend, talking about when we all leave for college. And it, honestly, terrified me. I've been so worried about where I'm going that I forget from whence I came, the place that I already know and love, the people with whom I've shared lives with for just under two decades of my life. I realized that this cannot be. There are so many people that I need to let know that they are important to me, that they will not be forgotten, ever. That they touched a life, mine, and that I hope that I could've at least done the same for them.
We laid it down and left it all behind,
We were blind.
Oh the Summertime.
So to anyone who reads this, all this whining I usually do in here, know that despite all the whining I do, that you bring happiness. The years that I've been able to spend with you were wonderful, the memories and the friendships will not fade, so long as we don't let them. Thank you, honestly, for putting up with me when I'm less than easy to put up with, for laughing at my somewhat not funny jokes, for helping me through the trying times that we all have certainly faced.
Thank you for living with me, but more importantly for learning the game of life with me too.
I can only hope that after these years are gone and we are all reminiscing, that I am remembered in the same way that I will always remember you. That I am worthy of the kind of friends that you were, that you are, that you will always be.
Go on ahead and let it fade away.
No looking back you know the past will stay.
...we could feel alive.