It may fail to draw me in, I won’t let it show, no no
I have thrown away too many days
and concluded there's no other way
This is the winter of yes
~Ari Hest, "Winter of Yes"
For such a small town (about 4,000 year-round residents), Valdez manages to draw a surprising amount of talent, particularly through the efforts of the Valdez Arts Council. Each year they arrange for about six acts which are touring Alaska to travel to the end of the road and play for our small audiences.
On May 7 this year, we were excited to have Judy Collins visit us. If, like me, you're not a child of the 60s and don't know who she is, do a web search for her music. I'm sure you'll have heard some of her songs before. At 74, she still has an amazing voice.
It wasn't Ms. Collins who gave me a lyric to remember that night, however, it was her opening act, New York singer/song writer Ari Hest. One of his songs was called "Winter of Yes." I quoted the last stanza above. The song's lyrics as a whole don't do much for me, although they do sound better sung than read silently.
It was just that line, "winter of yes," and the idea behind it that captured my attention. The song is about this young man saying yes to whatever comes his way, and being open to the experiences, even if they don't turn out the way he'd hoped.
The tagline of this here blog, my blog, is "approaching life with bold enthusiasm." It used to be something else, I honestly don't remember what right now, but I wanted something that would capture how I'm trying to approach my life and allow me to, hopefully, inspire my readers by sharing my passions. Although I consider it occaisonally, I didn't want to pigeonhole myself with a blog that was only about my art or my writing or biking or Alaska or.... Like anyone else, I have many interests through which I express myself, and I want to share them all with you.
Perhaps what I want most is to encourage you to say "yes" to life, to open yourselves to all the experiences you can. Even more, I want to encourage myself to do the same. Heaven knows, the last thing I want is to be boring, either in person or in writing, so that, if nothing else, inspires me to keep trying new things, experiences I can then share with you.
Instead of a winter of yes, I want a lifetime of yes. I hereby solemnly vow to myself to say yes whenever possible. Yes to embracing new experiences. Yes to tackling new challenges. Yes to making the most of this one short life I have.
What about you?
Are you saying yes to living the fullest life you can imagine?
