The Songs I’ll Never Write

There are songs I’ll never write
Because of you walking out of my life
There are words that don’t belong
Because of you I’ll never write another love song

— “The Art of War” by Anberlin

 

So, I was listening to this song on the way home from work tonight and it made me realize how much damage we do to other people when we let that fallen nature of ours take over. We embarrass, we depress, we oppress, we destroy…. The same words one person may take lightly, another may be broken upon.

 

I realized within every individual rests this reservoir of potential. And when we’re at our best, we can achieve so much. We can write songs or novels or poems or plays. We can create sculptures and paint paintings. We can memorize more digits of pi. We can cross borders and build empires, move and shake our world.

 

So… what happens when we’re not at our best? These things don’t happen. It’s the pain of stifled laughter, a joy that can never be expressed. It’s a horizon in the distance that we’ll never reach. And it’s all caused by what we do to one another. That girl you kept making fun of back in high school, that lover you loved to reject, that friend who’s hopes you said could never come true.

 

You have to wonder, if our lives had been even a little bit different, what songs might we have written? What if we hadn’t said that one thing to that one person– how might they have changed the world if we had lifted them up instead of putting them down?

 

–Amanda