“Each generation has an obligation to those who come after them to live honorably. I am the ancestor of my great-great-grandchildren, so it is also important that I live in a way they will take comfort in.” — Le Ly Hayslip,  IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE

You know how it goes, one thing leads to another, a snippet of memory surfaces and you soar through time and space to rest in an event that happened years ago. One minute I was looking out my window at the Golden Gate Bridge, the next it was 1970 and I was in Cobo Hall in Detroit listening to Simon and Garfunkel sing “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

They were at the height of their fame  then, young men crisscrossing the country on a musical high that stirred the heart of a nation. They’d come to Detroit in the dead of winter. I was sitting in the audience, stage right, 30 rows back. I could barely make out their faces. The lights dimmed, a lone piano tore open our hearts with the opening bars of “Bridge’s” gospel strain. Artie sang in a way that was biblical.

“When you’re weary, feeling small. When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all.” My heart ached at this poignant expression of our collective sorrow. Who would do this for us, a nation ripped apart by Vietnam, a nation still mourning John and Bobby and Martin? Who would do this for me, a very young, very idealistic woman/child flirting with the minefields of adulthood? 

“Sail on silver girl. Sail on by. Your time has come to shine. All your dreams are on their way. See how they shine.” Paul added this verse at the last minute in the studio. My God! the hope it gave me then! The hope it gives me still.

We need songs like this — songs and books and films and conversations — that mark our sorrow and give us hope now as then; perhaps, even more now than we did then. They help us confront the disenchantment and delusion of self and circumstance — help us discover who we are not so we can become who we want to be.

The chaos from which our “Nots” spring is inherent in the human developmental cycle. Each time some discord presents itself, we are given the opportunity to become more discriminating about what we choose to say and do, about who we’re with and what we commit to. We start to understand that we can actually choose our thoughts and shape our lives according to what we value most. We begin to express our “Silvergirlness,” the native dignity of our soul.

Few of us are called to sing a song that defines an entire generation, but each of us can bridge the troubled waters we find ourselves in by recalibrating the thoughts we think and living the values we hold dear. Even the smallest enhancement or repair can make a difference. Meteorologist Edward Lorenz calls these small variations that influence the outcome of an entire system the “Butterfly Effect.” The flutter of a butterfly’s wings in the Sudan can set off a chain of events in the atmosphere that result in a tornado in Texas or a blizzard in Montreal. One small change in our thinking, one “flutter,” changes our lives, the lives of others, and the lives of generations yet to come. We are that powerful.

“Sail on, silver girl.”

Your thoughts?