a tale of life with lyrics.

So I decided I would try an experiment and make a story out of various song lyrics. (yeah I'm extremely bored) Here are the rules..

1. Each sentence is a different lyric. (with a few choice commas and "ands and buts" to make the lyrics flow a little better.
2. I didn't use any one song twice

Sounds easy but its actually pretty hard.

I will call this story LIFE. Well its not really a story, just a bunch of good lyrics put together in a way that makes sense.

There's a life inside you. Your life is a song that you sing and the whole wide world is listening. How you receive it, well that’s up to you. Just live right now just be yourself. We may lose and we may win but we will never be here again. Just take time to realize that everything can pass you by. Because It's the heart afraid of dying, that never learns to dance, it's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance. It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give and the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live.

And nobody ever seems to remember that life is a game we play. So if your not willing to give it all you got, if your not in it for life let me make it clear so you might be. And when this life makes you wonder what have you got to lose, just go back to the moment of truth. And when it comes it moves so slow kinda like its saying I told you so. No one ever said it was easy, no one ever said it would be so hard. When you try your best but you don't succeed, when you get what you want but not what you need, when you feel so tired that you can't sleep but if you never try then you'll never know. It's not always rainbows and butterflies its compromise, it moves us along. And sometimes you bend sometimes you stand, sometimes you turn your back to the wind. Then on your knees you look up and decide you've had enough, you get mad you get strong, wipe your hands shake it off then you stand. You fell down of course, and then you got back up of course and you started over. And when the stars all look the same don't feel the cold or wind or rain everything will be okay. Because our lives are made in these small hours these little wonders, these twists and turns of fate time falls away. So make the best of this test known as life. Because life's a dance you learn as you go.

And life is more than who we are and life is made up of all that you’re used to. It is the clock upon the wall this is the story of us all. And all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. But it's hard to get hold of and hard to let go, always something we look for from the day we were born. So stop turn and take a look around at all the lights and sounds. Because right here right now there is no other place I would rather be. And if we had everything, would we still want to live?

And there’s no time to think about the starting or the end, we’ll find out I’m sure. Though we know that time has wings we're the ones who have to fly. What a dizzy dance, our lives are better left to chance. And it’s a bittersweet symphony this life yeah, and every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.

So I have worked on this forever even though it doesnt look like it, it hasn't turned out as good as imagined but I wanted to capture a sense of perseverance. I wanted to convey an expression that life is not always "rainbows and butterflies." Everyone has a big time in their life where they are pushed to the ground and they have their face rubbed in the sand and there are always those times that require a certain endurance and a certain amount of grit, and will, and just plain old hard work to get through.

My absolute favorite line is "It's the heart afraid of dying, that never learns to dance, it's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance. It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give. And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live." Yeah. Thats pretty good huh?

I once saw this show on the Discovery Channel(pretty much my favorite channel ever)

It was about these climbers that have climbed Mt. Everest many times and they were talking about how hard it gets towards the end, they talked about how exhausted you become and how dillusional you can get. They talked about how sometimes they want nothing more than to just sit down and take a break or maybe take a nap, but if they did this they knew they would die. The only way to stay alive is to keep going and keep trying. They talked about a guy they knew who just gave up. He was tired and he decided to just sit down for a minute, but even though they tried with all their power to persuade him to keep going he just couldn't do it. He just sat there and died right in front of them. I suppose that although normal life may not be as dramatic, the concept is still the same.

Life throws everyone a whole host of trials and ups and downs and all that really matters is how we deal with them. They are our gigantic mountain that we must summit, they are our deepest valleys that we must descend. They are the things that build you up, just to smash you back to the ground. They are the things that make you white hot, just so that they can hammer you and bend and shape you. They are the things that grind you so that you either become sharp or you break off and become dull. They are the things that we hate to love, but love to hate. They make us who we are and prime us for our next big challenge.

What do we do when we are pushed beyond limits we've never crossed? How do we react when we are brought down so many times that we don't think we could get back up if we were brought down one more time? When life is throwing you so many things you can't even catch them all, and you start to drop things then you start to think how much more, how much longer?...It is in these moments we define ourselves. In these moments we write the definition of what we are truly made of. These are the things that teach us, these are the things that we learn from. They are the things that make us become us.

And yet, even though these things can be the ugly side of life.. somehow ironically, maybe these are the things that make life so beautiful and so fulfilling. There is a certain quality, a certain silver lining through everything in life. For if we never knew these things, we would not be able to comprehend such happiness. We would not feel satisfaction of accomplishment and we would never have a desire to push through and endure to the end.

It is not so much what happens to us in our lives no matter how bad that we should care about, what really matters is what we do with those things that happen to us, and whether we can make them good.