I’m an Adele fan. Who
isn’t, right? And while her song
“Rolling in the Deep” has been played and covered to ad nauseum I keep coming
back to “we could have had it all…Rolling in the deep.” What does that mean anyway?
I have mentioned before that I struggle with repetitive
thoughts, again, to ad nauseum. Well,
this is one of the phrases that has been torturing me. Over and over. But I think that much of my issue with this
one is that I want to define the phrase.
I wonder what she means, and all I can do is redefine it for
myself. So here goes…
Maybe this seems corny.
A song lyric…really? But many
times my inspiration for writing comes from such. As a musician and a possessor of great
ability to recall lyrics of pretty much any song, I find I am sensitive to such
things. “We could have had it all”. I confess I have thought such things with
failed relationships in the past. But
now that I am happily married I realize that having it all is relative to the
dream that balloons out over the deficiencies in a relationship. I think that I have often supplemented what
was missing in the reality with what I wanted to exist in the dream.
When I look at my husband and my relationship with him, I do
not expect to have it all…That is an ambiguous phrase and does not apply to the
real and meaningful exchange that we enjoy.
As a person who was single for nearly forty years, peppering life with
difficult and impossible relationships, I have come to realize that what I thought
I wanted was very different from what I truly desire now. I think that when we compartmentalize, we
tend to put book ends on the stories of our lives with others. No matter the relationship, we cannot have it
all, because there will always be something else. Like the child wanting that one thing so
desperately, only do to discover after receiving that one thing, the joy in
having it is not nearly so strong as the desire to possess it. On to the next thing… And so often this is
what we do with the people in our lives.
The American dream perpetuates discontent, because we are
continually striving for more in that directive of “pursuing happiness”. But
when are we content with what we have? When
do we adopt the ideology to be “content in all things”? I’m just wondering, because it seems to me
that we set the bar so high for things and people that what we get can never
possibly hope to meet the expectation we have applied. Hmmm.
And what is “rolling in the deep”? I confess to taking this out of the context
of the song. What is the deep? Deep to me is the depth of human soul. There is a depth to my nature, my character,
that is tranquil and murky black. Very
few things of this world really touch it much less roll in it. But there are moments when something touches
and impacts me so magnificently that it stirs those deep waters and truly rolls
through them like a tide. When I look at
my husband and consider a future without him, my love for him stirs me
deeply. When I consider the wealth of
heritage I have in each my siblings and parents, not to mention unconditional
love and support, I am stirred down deep.
Those waters roll with emotion so intense that I am often
overwhelmed. And when I experience loss,
that deep devastating gouge that occurs when someone beloved leaves, the deep
stirs in me, churning with incalculable longing, loneliness, and loss…An ache
that cannot be soothed.
So, that is the meaning of “we could have had it all…rolling
in the deep”. ..Delusion and depth. I cannot embrace having it all because it is
a surface phrase that cannot be defined no matter how I try to quantify. It is shallow, naïve, and adolescent. But rolling in the deep? Well that is the part of me that houses the
essence of who I am where all my emotion springs from.
Maybe we should focus not so much on having it all but on
rolling in the deep…Just a thought.
Blessings,
L
