What a piece of magic this is!

No, it’s not a quote from Shakespeare. Mind you, now I think about it, there’s a line in Hamlet, where the man himself is monologuing about the human condition and declaims a strong-felt sentiment:

What a piece of work is man! [sic]

The reality is that first quote is from someone far more mundane than the bard: me. The occasion on which I uttered this equally impassioned statement was as I sat holding my smartphone and listening to the music flowing from it through bluetooth fairy land and into the headphones I was wearing.

The truth is I was at that moment just awestruck and a bit overwhelmed with what I was hearing, and just as significantly, with how I was hearing a particular song.

Not being a materialist by any measure, my phone and headphones are nowhere the latest or top of the line models, but still, to me, what I was hearing was magnificent. It’s the only word that fits really.

Anyway, that isn’t exactly what I want to write about today. Reflecting on the experience described above, got me thinking about the actual song I was listening to. And that’s what I want to write about now.

The song in question is written and sung by Australian singer-songwriter Cyndi Boste (died 2018) and is called Cry Down on Me. Here are the lines that have struck me particularly:

I’m not afraid of your tears.
Cry down on me
I’ll make sure nobody hears
Cry down on me.

Before we go on, a short note. Until I started research for this post I had my own idea of what ‘Cry down on me’ means. Seems I got it wrong. However, for this post I am choosing to believe that the songwriter agrees with me. If you look up the meaning and then listen carefully to the lyrics, you’ll see that perhaps I didn’t get it wrong after all.

Essentially here we have the singer/protagonist reassuring another person (friend? lover? sibling? We don’t really find out, but if I had to guess, I’d say they are lovers) that they are safe to share their tears, their sadness, anger, fears and so on. Most of us at some time or another (or always?) have been afraid to express or share our emotions, to show our tears.

So, why is our protagonist going to make sure nobody hears the other’s tears? Well, she is obviously aware that the other is at the very least embarrassed, perhaps afraid of being ridiculed, rejected, or perhaps they’re worried about appearing ‘weak’ or making themselves seem vulnerable.

And how did she come to that awareness? I think she has seen this other with the eyes of her heart, seen their need. And now she’s telling them: ‘Look don’t worry, I am listening to you with my heart and I can hear you.’

We are exposed to so much ‘noise’ from everywhere all the time. Even the tears of a loved one can be lost in the overall din that sometimes threatens to smother us all.

And of course we’re not just talking about literal tears here, and the sound the shedding of them makes: anything said, written or otherwise made known that is of substance, or real importance and meaning, is threatened with annihilation by all the trivia, gossip, advertising, round the clock news, and what I often call the general blah blah, that passes for life in the modern materialistic world.

Of course to protect ourselves from all that noise, it’s no surprise that we so often only listen with our physical ears, see with our physical eyes. Actually having said that, I know from my own experience that even that level of engagement and attention can be a struggle sometimes. And doesn’t that struggle sometimes lead us to closing down altogether?

I guess the answer lies in what Buddha call The Middle Way or Path: The bottom line is that we can choose what we listen to (or look at) and what we don’t. No need to switch off and isolate ourselves completely from the ‘outside’. Nor is it necessary to leave ourselves wide open to all that noise.

Like our protagonist in the song, we can listen with the ears of our hearts; we can see with the eyes of our hearts. It is in our hearts that love lies, where Truth lives. We can say to that other that we are listening and seeing with our hearts, while at the same time reassuring them that nobody, including us, is going to simply be hearing or seeing you only with physical ears and eyes.

The last time I listened to the song (yesterday: it’s become a big favourite) I had the thought that maybe our protagonist is reminding her Self that she’s listening. Sometimes our ‘real’ self can feel like a stranger, as if that Self is someone unknown, and living as a separate entity outside of us can’t it?

It’s at that heart level where we can truly listen, truly see, the other. And whether that other is one’s Self or another person, the truth is there really is no difference: your heart is truth, the other’s heart is truth, and it’s the same Truth.