Born
I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I’m gonna learn to love without fear
Pour me a glass of wine
Talk deep into the night
Who knows what we’ll find
Intuition, deja vu
The Holy Ghost haunting you
Whatever you got
I don’t mind
Put your elbows on the table
I’ll listen long as I am able
There’s nowhere I’d rather be
Secret fears, the supernatural
Thank God for this new laughter
Thank God the joke’s on me
We’ve seen the landfill rainbow
We’ve seen the junkyard of love
Baby it’s no place for you and me
I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I’m gonna learn to love without fear
*******************************
I first heard this song at a friend’s house about two years ago. I was in the midst of a seperation from my relatively new marriage, and things in my world were pretty much upside down.
Those days, all I seemed to do was cry or complain. Sometimes I even did both at once. I was just not a fun person to be around.
I’ve always been the class clown… always been the one people turn to for cheering up. I had no idea to how to deal with myself, and my friends were at a total loss as well.
What do you say to someone when a perpetual smile disappears from her face? How to you remind someone that life hasn’t always been heartache and loss? Are there words that tell her that this “too shall pass” without sounding cliche?
I certainly didn’t think so.
Thank God for the wisdom of friends.
My friend sat me down and simply said “Listen.”
I can’t begin to tell you how this song touched me. I felt less alone. I felt less insane. I felt like someone else knew my heart, my history, my story and was singing it back to me.
It’s so true, too. I was born to laugh. I was born to love. I was born to be happy.
These lyrics reminded me of all that. They reminded me of all the times in the past I had laughed my way out of pain, giggled my fears away, and chuckled when life really shouldn’t have been funny. They reminded me (and still do every time I hear them) that my entire being has always been about joy and passion and love… not the anger and sadness and sense of failure I had been nurturing.
I don’t know where I would have wound up had it not been for that friend and her cd player. But I do know this… thanks to her and these words I won’t be heading down that road again…
