Dissecting the Deep

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