The Playlist They Pass On
What you thought you left behind has been with you all along, waiting to be understood. It’s never too late to listen and appreciate.
Yunior Rivas
The song ends, and you press play again.
They filled every space of your life like sunlight slipping through curtains, unexpected and unwelcome. In the car, in the laundry room, in the kitchen. This collection of strange rhythms and melodies; they were the backdrop of your world but they didn’t belong to your world.
They played it over and over, as though it was all they knew, all they had. They danced along with a reckless abandon that was embarrassing to witness. They sang along with a carefree conviction that felt as though they were screaming your deepest secrets.
You were too busy making your own playlists, curating your own soundtrack, with songs that were cool, new, and you. The world whispered constantly for you to be something entirely your own, different and distinct.
So you turned their music off as soon as you could, skipped past it, silenced it without guilt. It wasn’t for you, you thought. It was too old, too foreign, too them.
Here you are now, humming the tunes you once rolled your eyes to. It’s stuck in your head again and you wonder what they felt when they first heard it.
Were they driving through their own chaos, steering through their own heartbreak? What were they feeling when they first heard this? Who were they with? What dreams were they chasing? Were they scared? Were they free? Did they hear lyrics that didn’t quite make sense at first? Did they press rewind the way you press replay today?
You think of them again, imperfect, incomplete, still learning, still becoming. Were they so different from you? Maybe they were never meant to have it all figured out. Maybe you aren’t either. Maybe no one is.
Maybe the answer has always been there, tucked between the beats and the notes you know by heart. Go on, play it again. This time really listen. You just might hear what you’ve been trying to find.
The song ends, and you press play again.