What Drives You Forward?

I’m going to ask you to sit for a few moments and consider:

What drives you?

Everyone fills their days with something. Do you have 2 separate lists? One of what you do and another of what you’d LIKE to do? What gets you up in the morning? What motivates you to keep going? What gives you pleasure and gives you a sense of fulfillment? No need to worry over your responses- no judging.

I’m going to use lines from BTS’s velvety seductive track, “Pied Piper”, off their new album Love Yourself: Her (remember that no judging rule, OK?). This piece is NOT a critique of this amazing song (if you want that, check out Tamar Anderson’s Billboard article here.) I am simply using it to discuss a topic we can can all relate to:

Obsessions.

Follow the sound of the pipe, follow this song

It may be a little dangerous but I’m very sweet

Many times we start with passions. There are things we find exciting- from traditional to novel to even contrary to what’s considered normal in our circles. Many times we stumble onto something that just seems to fit who we are. And we dive headlong into it.

But stop...Not just one hour, but a year or two flash by...

I’m takin’ over you

Passion dances along a fence with obsession. While I cannot speak as an expert or for everyone, in my mind, a big difference is that we can set a passion aside to enjoy other things. With obsession, we lose that ability.

Tweens and teens have been described as obsessed. Alas, this inability to release a topic is all too common in the adult world as well. Obsessions can be relatively harmless. They can also become extremely dangerous. For us, or others.

I play the flute endlessly  

I'm your guilty pleasure

Passions and obsessions give us pleasure, or at least offer some form of comfort in their familiarity. We joke about our guilty pleasures: chocolate, anyone? Today, we can literally get almost anything at any time. This can open a way to dependence upon whatever it was that started simply as a passion.

I wrote a piece about this in the spring titled Dream and Bloom. We each have only a certain number of dawns to experience before our final sunset. Our days and our pleasures should improve us and those around us. They should enlighten us. Not destroy us. Not shrink us.

I’m testing you  

Like the fruit from the tree of good and evil

At the beginning of this piece, I told you not to judge what you were thinking about. Now it’s time to do just that. Now, we can look at our lists, think back over what we were considering and ask ourselves:

Are we following a pied piper?

Are we blindly following a dangerous tune and path?

Or:

Are we writing and conducting our own music?

Are we stepping toward a future where we can all sing and dance together?

Today's the Day!

(If you are a Kpop fan and can spare a couple of minutes, I invite you to answer my 7-question survey. Thank you in advance!)

So, I’m calling this my mid-life crisis. Clearly, that has to be the explanation for why this 45 year old mother of 2 is driving to Chicago in the middle of the week in March to see the internationally popular and totally incredible, KPop band, BTS, perform a sold-out Wings Tour show in the Allstate Arena. Many thanks to my hubby, who got me the ticket and is taking days off work to allow me to take this journey, for that’s what it really is.

This is more than just a show. It’s a long, drawn-out experience.

I’ve been into this for a while but since January I’ve ramped things up to get a better grip. Tracking trends on social media. Following ARMY (the die-hard fans of BTS). Learning lyrics. Watching dance routines and music videos. Reading articles from a wide range of sources- from Billboard to AllKPop to XXL Magazine. Writing analyses of songs. Seriously, those around me have been putting up with a lot. 미안 해요. And again, thank you.

Why all the fuss? It falls back to my lifelong quest for understanding.

I’m at a unique point in my life. It’s a bit of nostalgia seeing how far I’ve traveled. I remember my own time when I could have been the uber fan with crushes plastered all over my personal space. How are things the same today? How are they different?

Today, I also have a personal stake in the more masculine side of adolescence. I’m a parent of boys entering their teens and I want to understand some of what they may face from their peers or from within themselves. For some reason, I’m finding that Kpop, and especially bands like BTS, is offering me a way to approach this sensitive area in their lives. It’s different enough that neither of us is the expert and we can talk more openly. Or we can just jam in the car.

Lastly, I’m always seeking to see if my belief that humanity itself is more good than bad, and more similar than different, is valid or not. This band seems to support these ideas and I’d like a bit more confirmation. In today’s world, more so than ever.

What do I hope the night will provide?

With my age comes an innate hope that we all get in and out safely. Beyond that, BTS’s albums focus on prompting us to acknowledge pain and stick together while we struggle through our evolution. That’s the message I want to feel: Life’s tough but we can still have fun along the way. Together.

Let’s do this.