I wish I could write songs better.  Bono, Leonard Cohen, Jimmy Page, I am not.  I could only squeeze out one verse for a song I tried to write for the girl I lit the candles for.  There is only one song I wrote that I consider decent and I’ve forgotten some of the words.  

But if I were a songwriter there are those I wish I could have written – Cohen’s Hallelujah, a good number of U2’s, John Legend’s All of Me. 

There is one song, however, that I find somewhat clever – Closing Time by Semisonic.  The one with the chorus “I know who I want to take me home” and commonly thought to be about a bar closing for the night.  In reality, it’s about the birth of the lead singer’s child.  Once you hear the explanation, you’ll never listen to it the same way again.

The line “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end” is poignant and prophetic.  For someone like me who really dislikes change and values stability, order, I’ve either been forced or chosen to embrace this principle.

All that in mind, it is comforting and even hopeful.  Bono sings – “Always pain before a child is born, still I’m waiting for the dawn.”

And those new beginnings, they too will end, it is just one unbroken story.