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I was in college sitting in a bar in Champaign, Illinois.
In the bar was a piano player. This piano player had a strong, yet easy voice. His fingers did a soft shoe on the piano keys, barely touching them as they danced.
He must have been in his sixties and he played a variety of music from rock to show tunes to blues.
I saw him play probably six times over a three-week period. And every night his final set would have one moment. It's a moment that I have never gotten out of my mind.
He would stroke the keys with the first notes of "People," the song made famous by Barbra Streisand in the musical Funny Girl.
And every time he did his eyes would well up.
"People," he would sing. "People who need people, are the luckiest people in the world."
His eyes would be wet. I looked and wondered. Theatrics maybe? But then his voice would crack and by the end of the song there would be streams of tears running down his face.
He wasn't that way for any other song he played, not for any other moment. But he was for that one...and it shifted things deep inside me every time.
I thought, what hurt has this man experienced, what loss has he undergone, what pain has he taken that would make him feel this song so completely.
I never asked him. But I've wondered to this day.
It was as if he knew a truth he could no longer grasp...and he stared at it longingly, begging for it to come back to him.
I see the piano man in my mind's eye...
I can be melancholic to be certain. I mean, my favorite musical instrument is the French horn. Find me alone on some of these dark, dreary winter nights and sad sentiment can sweep over me.
I grew up the middle child of five and I remember at times as a kid panicking at the idea of my brother and sisters falling asleep before me.
I didn't understand it then...I was just a kid...but realize now that I was petrified of being left alone.
Alone.
A state of being that echoes hauntingly across the landscape of every human experience from time to time.
We social creatures typically do not take well to prolonged involuntary isolation.
Indeed, silence is golden only when the silence is chosen. There are few things as agonizing as the crushing weight of an unchosen silence.
We wrap ourselves in our secret loneliness; a quietness so loud it shatters the sensibilities. It's a prison with silent walls upon which is the tedium and misery of a ticking clock.
Then the holidays descend upon us with their avalanche of emotions. And for many the intensity is magnified. And a few do rash things.
Auld Lang Syne is sung as a celebration of the New Year, but, if you pay attention to the words, is really a melancholic look back and remembrance of acquaintances lost and good times gone by. It feeds and breeds a kind of sadness.
In fact, as we get older, these holidays tend to make us look backward instead of forward. And as the late Dan Fogelberg once sang, "When faced with the past, the strongest man cries."
So this holiday season if melancholy should strike, find people. Go to a bar if you have to. Find them.
And don't simply be in the same room with them, engage them. As counterintuitive as it may seem, many people feel their loneliness just as acutely when they're in a crowd.
I remember my grandfather sitting on our couch at home on Christmas Eve, surrounded by his beloved family. I remember catching him every now and then staring off as if in a melancholy daze. I saw him and wondered. Even at that age, maybe this only child was missing his mom on Christmas.
I don't know, but being bodily in the midst of people is not enough. Talk with people. Laugh with them. Commiserate with them. This tends to chase the melancholy away.
In addition, if you feel the loneliness descend, do something for someone else. Acts of kindness also do a great job of shattering the morbid silence.
Whatever gets you looking outward instead of inward; anything to keep the introverted mind from beating on itself.
I suggest you embrace the insight shared some 35 years ago in a small bar in Champaign from a lonely weeping piano man...
People who need people,
Are the luckiest people in the world
We're children, needing other children
And yet letting a grown-up pride
Hide all the need inside
Don't hide the need. Embrace it. And embrace someone.
Happy holidays everyone. Really...
Happy holidays.
See you again January 6th.
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