This Song Helped Me Through Some Dark Challenges
Hi. Paige here...
Several years ago (actually, it was Election Day 2016) Don and I got thrown into a tortuously scary situation that we now fondly call our "eye journey."
To see or not to see
On a routine quarterly checkup, the ophthalmologist announced that I needed to start on some heavy meds (drops and pills), plus schedule eye surgery as soon as possible.
Thus began an open-ended period of uncertainty and fear about whether I would lose my eyesight.
And the possibility of total blindness wasn't just a fear provoked by the doctor's explanations or the worse-case warnings on all those informed-consents agreements I kept having to sign.
I knew too well that blindness was a real option. My mom had lost her sight a couple of years earlier — as in, she can't see anything at all — and from the same disease process I was now facing.
Fortunately, two years and six surgeries later, plus so many office procedures that I lost count, my eyes work great.
Phew! Putting it mildly.
I actually see better now, even without correction, than I did when I was 4 years old.
I'm beyond grateful for that, but the journey of getting here — facing unanticipated outcomes that kept reminding Don and me that we really didn't know if I would emerge fully sighted, fully blind, or somewhere in between — transformed me and taught me so much about life, about eyeballs, and about myself and what it takes to allow true healing to happen.
The forces of healing are obviously complex and multifaceted, but here's the powerful combo that stands out for me.
I was tirelessly supported by this quintuplet:
My healing team
The forces of healing are obviously complex and multifaceted, but here's the powerful combo that stands out for me.
I was tirelessly supported by this quintuplet of blessings:
- Two brilliant, compassionate, creative, eye docs and their ever-patient staffs
- Endless expressions of love and encouragement from ever-so-tender family and friends
- My decades-long meditation practice, which was, and still is, always focused on attuning to the larger forces of transcendent love that support and guide me.
- My beloved... wow. From the first moment we were told I was in trouble and through every moment of living with crazy side effects from the meds and the painful intrusiveness of the surgeries, he enrobed me in a love so pervasive and pristine that I know his love created the conditions in which I could be healed.
- And a handful of songs. This really surprised me. I like music, but it's never been a big thing for me. But one of those songs is so perfectly relevant to the current pandemic, I had to share it.
Why this song?
As you might imagine for someone needing to rest her tortured, frightened eyeballs much of the time, music helped.
Of course, certain songs helped me way more than others. As you'd guess, I gravitated toward those that soothed, encouraged, or uplifted me.
But the songs that got played over and over were those that helped me reconnect to that larger, transcendent presence of Love and all-right-ness that can feel a gazillion miles away when you're facing persistent trepidation and fear.
Nothing More, by The Alternate Routes, is one of those songs.
Both Don and I still tear up when we hear it. The kind of tears that are a welcome counterpoint to the tears of sadness and despair that so many are shedding during this coronavirus pandemic.
Other songs have that effect, too, but this one stands out because it speaks of love as something we do — not just something we feel.
In our work with people on relationship skills, and in our own relationship, we've always focused on the pivotal difference between love-in-action versus fear-in-action, but now... it's critical that we pay attention to doing love, not just feeling love.
We're not simply in this pandemic together. The way through it is together — making sure that choice after choice, big and small, reflects love-in-action rather than ear-in-action.
With that in mind, we hope you enjoy this song.
Love,
Paige (and Don, too!)
PS: We found several versions of this song on YouTube, but this is our favorite. Sung by these adorable children, some of the lyrics might be difficult to understand, so we've included them below.
PPS: If you know of other songs that have this message about doing love, please send us a link!
"Nothing More" Lyrics
To be humble, to be kind
It is a giving of the peace in your mind
To a stranger, to a friend
To give in such a way that has no end
We are love, we are one
We are how we treat each other when the day is done
We are peace, we are war
We are how we treat each other and nothing more
And to be bold, to be brave
It is the thinking that the heart can still be saved
And the darkness can come quick
The danger's in the anger and in the hanging on to it
We are love, we are one
We are how we treat each other when the day is done
We are peace, we are war
We are how we treat each other and nothing more
And tell me what it is that you see
A world that's full of endless possibilities
And heroes don't look like they used to
They look like you do
We are love, we are one
We are how we treat each other when the day is done
We are peace, we are war
We are how we treat each other and nothing more
We are how we treat each other and nothing more
We are how we treat each other
Songwriters: Eric Donnely / Tim Warren
Nothing More lyrics © Incognito Street Music, Bywatyr Music
