Analogies

You hear a song and immediately you’re in love. You play it constantly, and every time you do it gives you goose bumps. You can’t get enough. You sing it at the top of your lungs. It might make you laugh. It might make you cry. You feel alive when you hear it. You tell other people how much you love it. It’s perfect. By you, it can do no wrong.

Then you start hearing it on the radio, in TV commercials. Pretty soon it’s everywhere and at first you like it, though you can’t get away from it. You tell people this is your song, but saying this loses meaning. Now, it’s everyone’s song. People on the street, babies in commercials, at the sports arena, they’re all singing along and it’s overwhelming. You take hearing it for granted. The goose bumps are gone, it’s not special anymore.

Then one day it just happens, first you hate the melody, then you hate the lyrics. Pretty soon hearing the first few chords is enough to send you into a rage. Every time you hear it you immediately change the station or turn it off. You can’t even remember why you liked it in the first place. You don’t know what you ever saw in it. You tell other people how much you hate that song. By you, it can do no right.

You’re burned out.

It takes time but after the hype has died down -- and this is years I’m talking about here, long after no one plays it anymore -- you’ll hear it again and remember why you loved it. How it made you feel the first time you heard it. When and where you were, how much it meant to you. Then the memories come rushing over you like a burst dam.

Love might bend and sway the way a tree branch does in a thunderstorm, but it never breaks. It never goes away.

Of course, it’s easy to reconnect with a song.
All you have to do is listen.