I purchased a new iPhone recently. After acquiring a new phone, there’s always work to do, such as setting up email accounts, creating notes, and downloading apps and music that have been purchased previously. Today I took a few minutes to create a couple of playlists in my Music app. I knew I’d be in the car this afternoon and when I’m alone and driving, I don’t listen to the radio, I listen to the music on my iPhone.
I created a playlist that I named Inspiration, and I carefully chose 15 songs, from the 305 on my phone, to add to the list. These are the songs that currently touch my heart and soul in some way. They remind me of who I am and what my purpose is, and they encourage me on my journey. It’s a very eclectic mix that includes tunes from movie soundtracks, a few old favorites, and even bagpipes.
As I drove home early this evening, I cruised along, listening to my new playlist. That’s when I realized something odd had happened.
I was toward the end of my Inspiration playlist, when a song I did NOT add began to play. I was driving so I glanced briefly at my phone, to see if I had somehow exited my playlist. I had not. And yet, a song from the movie soundtrack August Rush was playing, Someday by John Legend. It’s a beautiful and haunting song that instantly created an ache around my heart, but how did it end up on the list? I have the entire August Rush soundtrack in my music library…but I had not listened to Someday in a long time, and it is not a song that I would label as inspirational. I hit the pause button.
When I arrived home I sat in the car and checked my playlist. There was Someday, added not once, not twice, but eight times. The song didn’t just mysteriously show up on my list, it was added a bunch of times! I wish I would have had the presence of mind to take a screenshot, but I was trying to puzzle it out. I deleted seven of the Someday titles, however I left one. Anytime something unusual or synchronous shows up repeatedly, I pay attention. Repetition is a Divine sign, a signal that here is something I need to know or learn. And, the number eight is significant. It represents new beginnings. I wanted to know what the message was for me, in John Legend’s Someday.
Listen to SomedayHERE.
I listened to the song over and over, first while still sitting in the car and then as I was preparing dinner. The song is a heart cry for reconnection with a lost love. One of the movie’s main characters, Louis, expresses the hope that someday he will have another chance to be with the woman he loved as a youth, and loves still.
My first reaction was to reject the song and the message. It didn’t seem to be intended for me after all. Other people came to mind, who could relate to this song and its message, but the story the song tells is not my story. If Someday had not been added to my playlist eight times, I would have simply deleted it and that would be the end of this story. But…that repetition was like a tap on the shoulder and a whisper. Listen. Ironically, that word is a theme throughout the August Rush movie. And my elevated heart rate and the ache in my chest confirmed it. Listen…listen again.
I did. I listened twice more. I looked up the lyrics. These words stood out to me:
I heard someday might be today
mysteries of destinies
they are somehow and are someway
for all we know they come tomorrow
for today my eyes are open
my arms are raised for your embrace
my hands are here to mend what’s broken…
I stayed open. I let my heart stay open, even though, truthfully, it wanted to close and declare, This song is not for me. And then, as I listened to the song one more time, I saw an image of myself as a little girl, a lost little girl. I’ve been doing inner work to reconnect with my young self, and ease her fears and heal her pain, show her unconditional love and let her know it’s all okay…I survived. I did more than survive. I came to appreciate and embrace all the parts of me that she tried to hide away and distance herself from.
In the light of this fresh understanding…reconnecting with myself, my younger self…this song does have a message for me. The words bypassed my logical mind and hit me right in the heart, and subtle energy that had been swirling around in my chest for many years finally worked its way through and left. That someday has arrived for me. My wee self and my mature self have found their way back to each other and love binds us together.
Oh, the sweet mysteries of life and the strange and amazing ways of the Divine. Someday will stay on my playlist…for a few days or for many days…until I’ve received from it all that is intended for me.
