Looking at Both Sides

Bows and flows of angel hair
    and ice cream castles in the air
...I've looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun;
   they rain and snow on everyone
...clouds got in my way.


  
How many times have I heard that song? and sung along to the few words I remembered?  Nice song, right?  Catchy tune, enjoyable rhyme--moons and Junes, tears and fears, dreams and schemes.  But, for some reason, while hearing Judy Collins sing it on my car radio recently, I really listened with my Mind Wide Open, catching all the words and their meaning.

Joni Mitchell wrote the song while observing clouds on an airplane flight.  It appeared on her album, "Clouds," in 1969, but Judy Collins made the first commercial recording, winning a Grammy for Best Folk Performance in 1968.

So it has been around for quite awhile.  And it's never too late to listen with mind fully engaged.

Every verse draws a contrast between the loveliness of puffy white clouds in a blue sky that makes us feel happy, proud, dizzy with love--and the underside of clouds as they rain on our parades and cast shadows of self-doubt.  We are left with the parting thought that looking at clouds (life) from both sides leaves us with a sense of disillusion.  I really don't know life at all.

I don't buy into a sense of pessimism.  I think that life and love are made up of both sides--euphoric and  disheartening--and all gradations in between.  It's in the acceptance of both these extremes as part of being human, seeing them clearly, and balancing them within the framework of my psyche--that life becomes either challenging and rewarding or just an ordeal to get through.  So we welcome the roller coaster ride of both sides, knowing that something's gained in living every day.  And isn't it wonderful when that thought is communicated through great music?

Youtube -- Judy Collins singing "Both Sides Now"