You know the song, don’t you? The lyrics go, “Don’t stop believing. Hold on to that feeling.”
As a bicentennial baby, some of my earliest memories are listening to Journey. Maybe I should say, some of my earliest memories are listening to my parents listening to Journey.
Sadly, the bloom has come off the rose somewhat. How many times can you listen to “ Any Way You Want It” and still genuinely enjoy it? To judge by the choices of radio DJ’s throughout the 1980s, 1990s and even early 2000s, the answer is a lot.
Still, in spite of Journey’s greatest hits somewhat wearing out their welcome after being on ceaseless heavy rotation for literal decades, I still enjoy their music. One song in particular seems appropriate to what I’ve felt in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, “ Don’t Stop Believing.”
Maybe the lyrics were already on my mind because I had recently finished a marathon rewatch of The Sopranos, the song featuring heavily in the show’s controversial final scene, but the second line of that song’s memorable couplet really resonates with me, “Hold on to that feeling.”
As the days and weeks pass, things will continue to return to normal. Limbs and branches will be collected and added to burn piles. Fallen trees will be sawn up and hauled away. Power lines get reconnected, roofs repaired. Eventually, we will all return to the hum-drum rat race of our lives, falling back into old patterns and our usual ways of perceiving and thinking of the world around us.
Don’t do that. By all means, go back to your lives, resume work, get back on a schedule and so on. But when you do, remember how you felt when all that was important was the safety of your loved ones and the fulfillment of your most basic needs. A line from Excalibur, one of my favorite movies, goes, “For it is the doom of men that they forget.” Embrace the journey as it were and hold on to that feeling.
As Helene recedes further into the past and normality creeps ever closer, I’ve reminded myself every day to never forget how it felt waking up Friday morning and knowing that my family was safe. Everything else is just details, inconveniences. Things can be replaced, but never people.
The next time “Don’t Stop Believing” comes on, even if you have heard it a thousand times before, turn it up a little and remind yourself. “The movie never ends. It goes on and on and on and on.”
Helene hit us hard, some of us grievously, but every fight I was ever in taught me something. Helene reminded me to savor the joy of being safe and alive, to embrace with gratitude how little it actually takes to make me happy.
The trick now is fighting to remember that— to hold onto that feeling.
