Some days are honest, some days are not;
Some days you’re thankful for what you’ve got.
Some days you wake up in the army
And some days it’s the enemy.
Back in the summer of ‘93, everything in my life was on the brink of changing. I had graduated from high school, in a place where I had never felt completely like I belonged. I didn’t feel like the person I really was, but rather a placeholder. Mind you, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be, I just knew I wasn’t quite there yet.
Anyway, I was trying to prepare myself for the “self-discovery” I knew was coming (or hoped anyway). I saw myself becoming “cool”: listening to “cool” music and being culturally aware. Hence, I bought my first U2 cd. It was Zooropa, and that alone should I told me that I was barking up the wrong tree. All the “cool” people who listened to U2 had been listening to them for years, or at least since Achtung, Baby. One way or the other, Zooropa really spoke to me, though I will admit that I didn’t really understand what it was saying until years later. But the lyric that really stuck out was the one above. It was the one that said to me: no matter how bad you feel when you get out of bed in the morning, at least you didn’t wake up in the Army. (Understand that at the time, and to this day, my visualization of “waking up in the Army” is one of waking up cold and miserable in a foxhole somewhere with bullets whizzing over my head and artillery rattling my teeth, no so much just being a professional soldier which could probably be ok in the right situations.)
And I kept that in mind through the vague hardships of college, both scholastic and personal, and then in my professional life as I meandered around the world. It’s been a boon to me when I get a little down.
Anyway, I woke up the other morning with a different, personal lyric echoing in my head: Some days you wake up in Belgrade, and you know what, it put a smile on my face.