Whoever says that Art doesn’t matter, that music, television and the many facets of entertainment don’t add to the culture of life, those opinions are from the unfeeling, from the unmovable. Today I had a heavy heart, my thoughts were of my feelings of non belonging, and a lack of a feeling of peace and home. I tried song after song to lift the heaviness from my heart, but none did the job, I wrote line after line, of poetic prose, to just feel lonely and lost. Then the words of Home, from the musical “The Wiz” crept into my mind and I realized that those were the feelings I was having. I may not have ended up in OZ, but I might as well have. I don’t have the designer shoes to click but I am on a journey.
Before I knew it, I was visiting Netflix and entering the title, and before the opening credits had concluded I was had already began to feel the tension in my neck subside. I sang along with tune after tune.
Each song seemed to touch a place of understanding in me, “You can’t win..” , opened my eyes and before long, I was easing on down the road. I could feel myself remembering with each verse, that the only way to make it out on the other end of this journey triumph is to do what the words were telling me to do. “Don’t you carry nothing that may be a load.”
The past regret, the lost battles have been daily stacking on top of each other leaving me beneath the rubble of my ill gotten attempts at change.
I listen to those around me tell me to put my feelings in check, and I rebuke their attempts to drain me of my passion, my emotional tie to the world. It sets me apart, what if I was like the tin man, allowing myself to become rusty beneath the days past, what if I don’t feel the tug at my heart of today, it will leave me stale, and arrogant, as if bad days don’t come. My strength is not just in my tenacity but in the understanding that being a survivor is living.
The scarecrow, reminded me that no day is full of complete knowledge, each moment, each experience is for me to learn and evolve. If I listen to those crows tell me that I can’t win, that I have to give up on my own ideals and belief, I will never make it back home, to my feeling of serenity and peace, because home is nothing more than a feeling of belonging, and support and love. On this yellow brick road, I’m on a journey to make it home, to retrieve my courage to be myself.
That lion, he touched me the most because I may appear strong, and full of the right words, and ideas, but I fear my desire to be loved and accepted, and I have lost my courage to yet again get up. It feels like I can’t win, like I can’t make it back this time, yet I still possess, my heart, my courage, my brain, and my belief. When the road is hard to travel, when the days seem full of obstacle after obstacle, we forget that the Wiz, is always there… I just have to kneel and humble my self and pray. I have to find my inspiration, find my faith in the reminders that I am not the first to stumble, and fall… but I have all that I need to get back up again.
The Oz I reside is full of familiar faces without unfamiliarity of who I am … but that’s okay because even when the setting changes, I am still the same woman I was when things were bright and full of promise, and this is still promise, another chance to build a heart of character knowledge. The empathy I will possess, the sympathy I will be able to exude, are the things that will give me success.
I will encounter my own Evelene, and even get lost in the devils poppy fields, but these are just moments, the destination is still there waiting for me, and I choose to keep going, and I can say.. Don’t bring me your bad news.
A brand new day is just the beginning of another opportunity to make this day a day better than yesterday. No one can take me from me, as long as I continue to believe that I am worth the journey.
It may seem small like just a musical, just a list of songs, with well-known actors, but it was my therapy today, my comforting arms, my friends, and reminder that Nothing is forsaken and without reason
The Weapon, The Cure, The Reason 