Lost Stars

Back in January I chose Comeback as my #OneWord365 for 2014. This was to be a year of comebacks in my life, and in many ways it has been. But I have also been reminded that the old cliche that says we take "one step forward and two steps back" got to be an old cliche because it is far too often the truth. So true, in fact, that I have begun to view the concept of a comeback as simply being able to reverse that process and take two steps forward to recover from each step in the wrong direction. We all struggle with forward motion...

On July 4th my wife Marilyn and I went to the movie theater to see the film Begin Again. You may not have heard much about this movie, and that is a real shame, because we found it to be brilliant. The cast, featuring Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightly, Hailee Steinfeld and Adam Levine is superb. The film revolves around songwriters and music, and the original songs in the film captured my ear and my heart. So please, go see it. In a world full of Transformers, movies like Begin Again deserve our support.

But the real message of the film is one of comebacks. The characters have all faced disillusionment and disappointment in their personal and professional lives, and the movie chronicles their attempts to rebound from the same sorts of messes in which we all find ourselves. It is both encouraging and real. Not all comebacks are a success. The music video embedded below is from the movie- in fact it has three different versions in the film. This is the final one. I must confess I cannot stop listening to it, both this version and with Keira Knightly singing it. It asks a question that I find to be crucial to the idea of making a comeback from the things that drag us down. "Are we all lost stars trying to light up the dark?" Life, love, relationships and dreams will all send us two steps back from time to time. How do we respond? And where do we find the courage to to forward again? I hope you will enjoy the song as much as I do. But more importantly I pray you will realize that even when things feel the darkest, it is within you to be a light in our world. The light doesn't burn out. It's just that sometimes we are all Lost Stars...