The Lovers, The Dreamers, and Me

Last night, my wife and I watched The Muppets (2011). This got me thinking about one of the key songs in the Muppets’ milieu: Rainbow Connection.

There’s something important about this song. I’m not sure how to exactly explain it, but there’s something about this song that speaks to me on some level.

For those of you not familiar with the song, I urge you to find it somewhere and listen to it. Specifically, the last verse. As this post is discussing it, I feel that it’s fair use for me to write it out:

Have you been half asleep?

And have you heard voices?

I’ve heard them calling my name.

Is this the sweet sound

That called the young sailors?

The voice might be one in the same.

I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it.

It’s something I’m supposed to be.

Someday we’ll find it,

The rainbow connection.

The lovers, the dreamers, and me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t actually hear voices. This isn’t a schizophrenia thing. It’s more a subtle calling. The ancient Greeks called it a muse, the Romans a genius. The song opens a door somewhere in my psyche leading to an undiscovered, unexplored world, as expansive and endless as I allow it to be.

Much like that oft-used factoid^[1] regarding the brain, I feel that I’m only using 10% of my potential, or maybe not potential, but something. There’s something I’m not using to its fullest extent, it feels, in some ways, like I’m standing in a room that’s uncomfortably too small for me to move around freely. Like I have a pair of wings ready to sprout from my back, but they’re confined by something wrapped around me.

It’s important that you don’t think I’m crazy. This isn’t a delusion. I don’t honestly think I have wings ready to sprout from my back. It’s a metaphor. Or an analogy.

Nevertheless, I feel that there is something out there, something I’m supposed to be. Some prize I’m supposed to claim. It’s a road, like Bifrost, that leads to some hall of heroes, like Valhalla. It’s an elusive path, but I feel driven to find it, to traverse it, and to reach my goal.

Once again, I know that Bifrost is a mythological road, and that Asgard makes as much sense as Yggdrasill being the center of our cosmos.

But where is that first step?

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[1] Yes, I’m using factoid correctly here. Look it up.