viva la vida

November 14, 2008

Two weeks ago I went to my second Coldplay concert this year. I'm not usually one for following the masses – but the energy of Chris Martin is awesome to see live. It's enough to make this old stick in the mud smile without thinking and sing at the top of her lungs along with other tens of thousands of fans. What lingers most about that night – even more than him collapsing on the stage extension in some yoga pose without losing a beat of song, or rolling over backwards to reconnect his body mike, or the streams of butterfly confetti to Lovers in Japan – was the contagion of his good energy. I left the Garden that night in a sardine procession to the Green Line. And… instead of the regular Boston crankiness, people were… happy. That happiness continued into the bowels of the train station, even as the tired masses had to wait for multiple trains to pass to get on. Because in the delirious afterglow of those happy two hours, those tired masses started singing the oh oh oh's from Viva la Vida to pass the time.

Then exactly a week later, I woke up to a second burst of good spirit in the city of Boston. The aftermath of Obama's success put spontaneous smiles on so many faces I encountered on the street, witnessed giving reports on the local news, and spoke with in my immediate circle. Strangers on the telephone had a perkiness in their voice I found startling and refreshing. It was a happy day for so many.

When something like that happens once, I try to mark it and register it for memory's sake. So that when life gets me down and the petty BS of day to day is depressing, I can remember that there are sparks of brilliance in human nature. But twice – two Wednesdays in a row, no less – I have to take a little more notice. There is a lesson to be gained in it.

Recently, I have let the other side of humanity get me down quite a bit. There has been so much pettiness and deliberate cruelty and absent-minded disregard directed at me that I've absorbed that negativity and started to let it leak out in my day to day interactions with people. It's a vicious circle because my hurt ends up irritating the people who hurt me so that they feel no obligation for sympathy or making amends… and thus it continues without improvement.

But now, I'm thinking the oh, oh, oh's in North Station are a better option.

I don't know that I'll ever perform in front of tens of thousands of people. And I definitely have no plan to run for president. But there are Wednesdays when that sense of contagious optimism comes on a smaller scale. I work for two women who host a motley crew to dinner on so many Wednesdays. They don't have big confetti guns that shoot out mulit-colored butterflies. They do give us a yummy meal, laughs, and the freedom to pursue subjects that polite conversation pooh poohs. Most importantly in that conversation, they really listen and really care. And there is always a hug goodbye before the evening ends. In that simple yet meaningful way, they give a smaller group of people a reason to hum on the way home.

But you know, the echoes of all those Wednesdays are smiles.