Empty Hearts

So save all of your light
For those who can't sleep at night
And who can't even sing to their shadows

Oh they ride into town
And they throw the shots down
And they save the last round for the windows

(CHORUS)
Singing don't let me into this year with an empty heart
With an empty heart
Don't let me into this year with an empty heart

I'm inside with my friends
We build fires and pretend
That the night could just bend on forever

While outside in the frost
Are the wolves and the lost
And we sing to the dogs or whoever

Chorus

There's a friend that I have
And for her I'll go back
You see all of these empties that I'm holding

They're too much for a man
Empty arms, empty hands
And she'll know me by the sound of my hoping

"Empty Hearts" - Josh Ritter

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More musical meditation on the new year ahead.  This song made me think more about the situation again after the last blog went up.  Having an empty heart means so many things.

Of course there is the romantic implication.  Who wants to be alone? I would certainly love to have someone in the year ahead. The thought of having to spend another year by myself is discouraging. Just the thought just of not having someone to kiss on New Year's Eve....AGAIN...is discouraging.  (I mean, come ON.  Is this really too much to ask?)  

To be honest, though, if all the ones who show up to fill that space are as self-consumed or as willing to put me dead last as the ones who have been around in the past year, then maybe what I need to fill up that space is a contentment with being alone.  I am tired of being something less than an afterthought or a part of a collection.  I deserve better than that.  Maybe being happy with being alone is a safer thing to ask for.

I don't want to go into the new year with an empty heart, though.  I want it to be full again of enthusiasm and excitement.  I want it to be full of love and joy.  I want to believe in the positive not as a dim miracle that breaks through sometimes despite all odds but as the thing that is there all the time if one will only look for it. I used to be that person.  I want that person back.

I want to let go of the "empties that I'm holding."   I want to let go of the things and the people that I lavish time and care on that only turn around and hurt me, either intentionally or through neglect and indifference.  These empty things break me, empty me in turn.  I think they do nobody any good.  I want to replace them with things that mean something, are worthy.  I want full arms, filled not necessarily with romance but rather with the people that I love, family, true friends.  I want busy hands, engaged fully with things that are meaningful and not just idly twisting together waiting for the next disaster to fall down.  I want to be able to hear the sound of my own hoping again.  I love that line in this song.  I think that's beautiful.  

Nobody, no mortal man, can fill up an empty heart, can mend a broken one.  I've known that for a long time.  This song does remind me, though, of how important it is to refocus priorities and assess the condition of my heart, to take care of the internal house cleaning, as it were, as the old year fades away.