Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Different Races To Run

In a recent therapy session, my therapist enlightened me to the fact that my wife and I have had different races to run.

Intuitively, I understood this. But it was her follow-up that my wife's childhood nutrition may have been so different from mine, that it radically shapes the life-races we've had to run, which really drove the point into my body.

I can remember being hungry as a kid and waking up in the house and seeing my breath it was so cold. I vaguely remember powdered milk. Disgusting.

So with this in my mind germinating, my wife sends me this:

https://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/2023-01-09/conservative-voice-glenn-loury-and-poet-ravi-shankar

Which is really about an overcoming ethos in which there are no "systemic" hurdles, only individual shortcomings (especially willpower). I'm generalizing but I genuinely feel this is the rhetorical endpoint. 

Also rumbling around up there was a chord progression I really liked. So I did some song freewriting:


Was denken Sie? (What do you think?)

CHORUS

It’s not as simple as you make it out to be

It’s not as clear-cut to me

It’s not as easy as one, two, three

Why don’t you believe me?

It’s almost as if you can’t see me (or feel me)

VERSE I

Who’s to say who overcomes? Who bends the world and gets the good things done? When we’ve got different races to run Please don’t mistake my question As a justification We’ve had different races to run

VERSE II

Maybe it depends, from where you begun Maybe all the babies have a damn good reason Maybe baby, we’ve got different races to run Please don’t mistake my question As a justification We’ve had different races to run


VERSE III

(one or two chord stops)

They might tell you there’s no system (pronounced sys-TUM)

Only veiled machination

They might tell you the hero overcomes

While forgetting no man is an island (pronounced eye-LUND)

They might tell you not to question
They might tell you it’s an illusion

An excuse masquerading as a delusion But trust me, we’ve had different races to run




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