This is how it unspooled.
Remembering the iconic We Are The World music fundraiser in 1985. Holy cow, a 40-years romp back into rock ‘n’ roll history! (Holy cow! You are so dating yourself. What does holy cow mean, anyway? Another time…)
Holy cow aside, I felt compelled to view the long-ago music video. What a swell of nostalgia while listening to, and seeing, so many of rock’s foundational icons in one room. Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Tina Turner and 43 other luminaries, squeezed together in a tiny studio, each voice still reflecting its own uniqueness from that era. (Era? That makes me sound so old! Oh, wait, I am older…..)
Of the song’s many stanzas, 19 to be exact, 3 lines tugged me away from my avid celebrity-watching on the video. Rarely do I ever remember song lyrics. I’m usually the one silently moving her lips during a song, trying to pretend I know the words (I don’t.)
Those remembered song lyrics:
“There’s a choice we’re making;
We’re saving our own lives.
It’s true we’ll make a better day, just you and me.”
Hey, “just you and me.” Our shared humanity. Our shared humanity, often riddled with innate differences.
Where’s a good old fashioned bridge when you need one? A bridge where we argumentative and dissimilar humans can meet in the middle as just that - mutually vulnerable humans.
At this juncture, I’m slipping in the “r” word, research. No no, I promise this will not become didactic. Promise…. (Really.)
The “r” word, research, has described “behaviors through which people benefit others” as bridge building. The simplicities of, well, geez, being kind and friendly. Oh, right, just like those “We Are The World” lyrics:
“It’s true we’ll make a better day, just you and me.”
OK, I’m out of breath from this show-and-tell. Such a potent self-reminder why I’ve remembered “We Are The World” lyrics all these many years. It certainly may seem like an artifice, being kind and friendly with those whose visions are different than mine. Plank by plank, however, I’m building bridges to those who, like me, are fallible human beings.
Oy, but such a challenge in our volatile world to remember our shared humanity. C’mon….Running a track of “We are the world” in my head? Sharing an ardent thank you with the nice grocery person who stopped the self check-out machine from indiscriminately beeping at me? Saying a very Southern “Howdy” to the man who offered me his empty shopping cart? Small acts can be planks to building bridges of acknowledgment to someone else’s humanity. Hey, someone has to model this kind of stuff. Why not us?