“Let’s Get Together and be Alright” is the name of a popular reggae song, which doesn’t mean anything except that it does, and the world is not made any better because it was written or maybe it was. There is no way of judging most things as to how important they might be–important to you, unimportant to me.
I have a belief that you must give everything its space, and let whatever it is blossom in that space until you can use it, for that is why it was given to you, so that you could use it, be it a song, a test of some kind, quotes from a preacher, a poem, a lie or the snatch of something heard from someone else’s mouth as you passed down the street. All of this is fodder for a life, a life we all must live, you know. A life we’ve got to live without regret or sorrow because it was given to us for free. It was cast upon us like a flood to be examined, played with, overruled and soon come to terms with. Where life is almost over, we’ve got to measure what we did to help somebody. That’s hard. You never really know what you’ve done to help. You almost always know what you did to hurt. Do you emember what you last did to forgive? Was it a friend’s impatient moment or a girlfriend’s lie or a boyfriend’s indiscretion?
Do you remember what it took to graduate or to take that other step to the place where you should be and hadn’t gotten there because you were lazy or in something else? All of us knew you would get there. We just thought it would take more time. You weren’t being teased. You were being told that you are not as fast as the rest of us, my brother, so move at your own pace and take the same test 10 years from now. You’ll pass, we won’t; you retain, we absorb. Did you ever know there was a difference between these two words?
Take, for instance, when you were a little boy or girl, you would watch your sister put on makeup or your brother shave, and you would remember the steps. You knew that you could do it, and as soon as you started to try, you screwed it up unmercifully by cutting your face to fare thee well by shaving or by looking like a grotesque clown the other way. Come now and abide with me as I wind down these pieces of 2008. Haven’t gotten used to using 2000 yet and maybe I never will, but let us wind it down anyway because 2000 is here whether we like it or not. It might as well be early as late, and it might as well be ours. The time has come. It might as well be ours.
Think radically, if you will, about what tomorrow must bring. Think about the sunshine and the moon and the stars. Think about yes. Think about no. Think about maybe. Try yes. It’s a good answer for almost everything. Then a new answer can be an easy answer or a very difficult one. Shouldn’t there be a really real reason for saying no to anyone about anything? That just doesn’t make any sense. Say yes for love. Say no for meanness, say okay for trying and yes for running slow, but never no for running out of time. Remember the Walrus: There will be time, there will be time. Kiss tomorrow goodbye, if you will, and all the other tomorrows that you have not been allowed to kiss or hold or hug or push away. There is no answer except the answer that is. Good evening, my brother and sister, on the new twilight of another year’s beginning and another Christmas past.