damn

[jenk]

We drove down to memphis the sky was hard & black
Up over the ridge came a white cadillac
They'd drawn out all his money and laid him in the black
[..]
Bye-bye Johnny, Johnny bye-bye
You didn't have to die
You didn't have to die

- Bruce Springsteen

update:

I brought up media player specifically to play "Johnny Bye-Bye". Yes, it's about Elvis' death, but at the moment it speaks to me about the death of someone I knew.

I played the song several times, wrote this post, and moved on to other things. MP kept playing. I realized it was playing another Springsteen song, called "Human Touch"

Well girl that feeling of safety you prize
Well it comes with a hard, hard price
You can't shut off the risk and the pain
Without losing the love that remains
We're all riders on this train

And I am reminded that choosing to care means choosing to hurt. To paraphrase Madeleine L'Engle, to care is to be vulnerable. We all hurt people we care about without meaning to - not to mention the times that we do mean to hurt them.

It's not always an easy choice. Yet as the next lines in the song remind me...

So you've been broke, and then you've been hurt
Show me somebody who ain't

...we can't choose not to be hurt in this life. We can choose to minimize hurt. We can choose to deny that we're hurt. But we're going to get hurt.

And I wonder...is it worth it?