Be The Medicine, Not The Drug

The other day I posted a video of my song, “If You’re Lucky Your Heart Will Break.” It’s about the way that pain can be an important teacher. After I posted it, though, I saw an image of a boy in Gaza who had just died of starvation. Ouch. I felt ashamed to be suggesting that anyone should ever see his heartbreak as lucky.

Part of growing up is learning to be wrong. Not just in the sense of being misinformed, but in the sense of realizing that truth depends on a very fragile context, outside of which even the deepest wisdom rings hollow and false. You can get defensive. You can get guilty. You can speak in cliches no one could ever object to. But it’s more noble, I think, just to admit when you’re out of tune, and let life bring you back into the fold.

In her book, Loving Corrections, adrienne maree brown says that what both supremacist and cancel culture get wrong is that, beneath our fighting, we ALL deeply need each other. But to understand how you’re needed, you need humility about when it’s time to offer your gifts. Particularly as a white man, I’ve learned that if someone doesn’t want to hear what I have to say right now, it’s not time for them to hear it. I don’t need to push or complain.

Whoever you are reading this: you are medicine. You have within you what can uplift, soothe, and cure. But remember, too, that what makes medicine is that it’s taken for a purpose and at the right time. In our culture, people often abuse psychedelics, forgetting that it’s not “medicine” if you do it constantly — it’s a drug. In the same way, we’re taught to be like drugs: constantly thrilling and desired. That’s a recipe for becoming toxic.

I still think “If You’re Lucky Your Heart Will Break” could help someone. Perhaps it already has. And if or when it doesn’t, that’s part of the medicine too. To be fully yourself, to serve, and yet to let life teach you your part: are these not just different ways of describing love?