I suppose it isn't Monday. I meant to send this out on Monday as I usually do, but I got distracted so I didn't.
I didn't do a whole lot of exciting stuff this week, so I'll try to make it sound like I did by over-exaggerating everything I say like a 17 year old girl.
I am like, so into chess again. We are so back. I'm basically the chuzz (chess huzz) and me and Magnus are gonna have crazy beef in a few years when we go at it for the title. My ELO is higher as my Snap score now, which is impressive because I have a Snap score of like 200. I even read chess books, like paper books, which is so weird because the longest things I usually read are Sabrina Carpenter's posts about Coachella 'cause a picture's worth a thousand words and there are 7 pictures which makes, like, 700 words I think. I haven't been counting but I think there have more than 700 words in this paper book so far. I could ask AI to summarize, but I'm in my anti-clanker era right now so I'd rather read it for myself, you know?
Okay, I can't keep writing like that. It makes my eyes twitch for some reason, not sure what that's about.
I learned to play Song to Woody on the guitar this week. I love that song. Let me just paste the lyrics here for you:
I'm out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin' a road other men have gone down
I'm seein' your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings
Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along
Seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn
It looks like it's a-dyin' and it's hardly been born
Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know
All the things that I'm a-sayin' and a-many times more
I'm a-singin' you this song, but I candt sing enough
'Cause there's not many men that done the things that you've done
Here's to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too
And to all the good people that traveled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind
I'm a-leavin' tomorrow, but I could leave today
Somewhere down the road someday
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say, "I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too"
I love this song for a lot of reasons, but my favorite verse (although very hard to pick) is the one that mentions Cisco, Sonny, and Leadbelly too. Those were contemporaries of Woody Guthrie who influenced Dylan's songwriting. By referencing both themselves and the people who traveled alongside them, Dylan writes to a whole generation of musical enjoyers. Dylan implies that the songs that he and others write are journeys in and of themselves, and if some sung notes and plucked chords can be a saga worth following, then a person is unfathomably more interesting. However, Bob Dylan immediately notes that those same, infinitely complex people that write the songs and hear each other are fragile and fleeting, and that neither their feelings (hearts) nor physical actions (hands) last long when in the context of intergenerational impact. Quite simply, they come with the dust and are gone with the wind that brought them there.
I have felt this lately. I have thought a lot about the friends I've made and the people I've had the pleasure to know. I've made one observation: it's hard to let go. I have had very, very close friends who I don't feel very close to today. I know that if I needed anything they'd be there for me, but I don't spend as much time with them as I'd like to, which is all I ever really wanted in the first place. People come and they go, and maybe the best I can do is run with them for a little while until I get too tired or we turn different ways.
As the title suggests, something happened a year ago. Although from the classic LDS children's version of the 'happy birthday' song, it wasn't my birthday. Isn't it odd that we sing the same song every year? You could measure your life in birthday songs if you wanted, cause it's the same one every time. The universe hasn't changed a lot in that one year, but you've ticked off one more box on the 10 by 10 grid, and to you, it really matters.
It has been a year since I left my family in search of more meaning than what I had at home. I left to try to help others find it too. I saw a funny ol' world that was coming along, and boy, was it sick, hungry, tired, and torn. I think it's funny how all those conditions are ones that we fight so hard to be out of, but they're inevitable. Humans will always get sick and hungry. They'll always be tired after 12 hours awake, they'll always be torn between decisions and sacrifice one thing for another. I think Bob Dylan was onto something when he said the world "looks like it's dyin' but it's hardly been born" because everything is always moving towards closure, towards an end that may never come. I took off my missionary tag 40 weeks ago because I didn't feel like I was finding that meaning. Not that I hadn't found it, I wasn't finding it. I felt the same way I felt when I missed friends; like I had something in the past but didn't have it anymore. I don't know that I'll ever find purpose and fulfillment, but I think that's okay. Bob Dylan taught me that this week. The hard traveling is the beautiful part: that's the part the Dylan writes the song about.
You may wonder, "what's the point, then? If finding the fulfillment is impossible, then what's the point of it all?" I don't think that reaching that end goal of happiness is important. Dylan writes that he'd just like to say that "he'd been hittin' some hard travelin' too", implying that he was still traveling at the end of his song. He also suggests that he is helping someone else along their path. If there is no end goal to be reached, then how do we solve this problem? Well, it seems that the best way is to make it easier for other people to feel like they could.
Sometimes it is hard to feel like my life is going to go anywhere. With sky-high home prices and ridiculous costs of living, I wonder if I'll ever get to host a barbecue or spend a night on vacation in Europe under pink skies. Fortunately, I'm not alone. There are millions like me who will eventually tire of the conditions they see and realize that they want to feel like if there ever was an end, they'd like their chance to reach it. Like John Lennon said in Imagine, "I'm not the only one".
Now, I know this is a ridiculous line of thinking. Obviously my life will continue. I should be able to survive and live a fairly normal life that many people would give anything to have. I've also noticed that when humanity runs out of problems to solve, it creates new ones. The Silent Generation should have been the most depressed, yet Gen Alpha leads the pack.
All this to say, I'm still working on that whole meaning thing. I hope you are too. I doubt that it will ever stop and I think Bob Dylan was starting to figure it out. It's no wonder he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and I know they only give that to people for high performance in the "figuring it out" category. I think he was write when he said that lives were a "road other men have gone down". No matter where you go, you always have to go somewhere else until you die and can't go anywhere anymore. So thank you, Bob Dylan, for freewheelin' your way to knowledge and writing it down so that I could have some of it too.
Bonus points for making it rhyme and putting it to music.
I don't have anything else to say today. I told you at the beginning that I didn't do much this week, and I meant it. Have a fantastic week, and listen to Bob Dylan. I'll make it easy.
-Will Ott
PS. I told you it would be easy.
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