Blog 342 – 07.14.2016
(Excerpt from the book, Emily – The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along)
Episode 14

Most of Emily’s gifts to me were music, songs she thought I would like and for a long time I thought her choices uncanny but we are all connected and Emily saw and taught me to look for the connections. We were made to build bridges of connection not walls of separation.

When Emily was still a teen she went to a little studio and recorded a tape with background arrangement of the Beatles song Yesterday for my birthday. I listened to it over and over and made many copies to share with friends and family. Let me say here I no longer make the distinction. Someone has said friends are the family we get to choose. I say we are all family. The only true enemy is our own Ego that would have us distrust our brother. I think it no accident that the word in the New Testament used for the great enemy of mankind is Satan and the meaning of that word is: “Accuser of the brethren.” We are instructed to pray for our enemies and the strongest reason for that, I think, is that we truly have no enemies only brothers.

Yesterday has been a favorite song of mine since it first came out when I was about the same age as Emily when she recorded it for me. I am no longer haunted by the past as the young lover in the song was but have learned to see the gifts in even the seeming losses of the past. Nothing is lost and contrary to the famous quote about those who are ignorant of the past being doomed to repeat it I think too much focus on the seeming tragedies of the past not only cheats us out of experiencing the gifts of the present but makes tragedy our default mode and current reality. It is a trap to spend life looking back. When we allow ourselves to be consumed with thoughts of what might have been we miss the Now and in the words of the poet: Now is all there is. Today and living today to the fullest not only saves us from the what might have been better ghost of the past but also the specter of a fearful and worrisome future. At least that is my understanding of the Bible verse, “Today is the day of salvation…”

Yesterday is a beautiful song and I hope you get the chance to hear Emily sing it but even more than that I really hope you hear in your own heart the happier lyrics of ” Happy Days Are Here Again and Forget Your Troubles Come On Get Happy.” Barbra Streisand and Judy a Garland did a wonderful duet of those two songs together. I am so grateful that it is one of the selections that plays from time to time in the juke box that is my mind. I hope many of you will consider adding it to your own Playlist. To quote one of the great writers of encouraging words, Mike Dooley, “Thoughts Become Things, Choose the Good Ones.”

Your friend and fellow traveler, Emily’s Dad,
David White