The World I Know...

Driving to work recently, this song came on while I was exiting off of 8 and as I rolled to a stop, for the first time, I really listened to the lyrics and it hit me hard. I couldn't stop the tears from falling as I slowly drove down the road, just listening.

I got thinking about my life, my daughter's life, my mother's life and lives of others from generations back.

I recalled a conversation with my mom about how she grew up in Japan and how war affected who she is. At 8 years old, her home was destroyed by American bombs while she and her mom where out at the grocery store. They walked through carnage of dead, burning bodies and body parts, burning buildings crumbling around them as they walked to get where their home use to be but was now flatten and burning. Everything they owned on their bodies as they stood there in fear, anger and sadness.

She came out of that a strong woman who did more for others than they do for her but the horrors she saw as a young child affected her that way. To do more for others so they never have to go what she went through. That is how she decided to live her life and continues to as she inches her way to her 80th birthday in December.

Then I looked to the other side of my family tree... my daughter. She is a young, talented, intelligent, beautiful woman, who is living her life on her terms but she works hard for everything she has. Even though war has not touched her personally, she has grown up in a society and generation where there is always war somewhere.

It got me thinking... what generation did not have war? I mean, at all. But history shows that there was never a society that was free of war. There has been fighting from the dawn of time.

Makes you wonder what kind of life it would be to turn on the news and not have anyone talk about war in some faraway land.

So, as you listen, what kind of world do you see and what kind of world do you wish for?

Here are the lyrics:

Has our conscience shown?

Has the sweet breeze blown?

Has all the kindness gone?

Hope still lingers on.

I drink myself of newfound pity

Sitting alone in New York City

And I don't know why.

Are we listening

To hymns of offering?

Have we eyes to see

That love is gathering?

All the words that I've been reading

Have now started the act of bleeding

Into one.

Into one.

So I walk up on high

And I step to the edge

To see my world below.

And I laugh at myself

As the tears roll down.

'Cause it's the world I know.

It's the world I know.

I drink myself of newfound pity

Sitting alone in New York City

And I don't know why.

So I walk up on high

And I step to the edge

To see my world below.

And I laugh at myself

As the tears roll down.

'Cause it's the world I know.

It's the world I know.