One of the ideas I had in mind when I first started this blog was to share and write about songs that touch me or move me (hence ‘music’ in the domain name.) Gravity by A Perfect Circle is one of them.
In it, frontman Maynard James Keenan (also known from Tool) sings:
“calm these hands before they
snare another pill and
drive another nail down
another needy hole…
please, release me”
What I realized when those lines last came back to me is that our misbehaviors, binges and addictions so often come down to the love that we don’t give ourselves. To punishing ourselves for our mistakes or shortcomings, for any and all deviations from our ideals and expectations, which we habitually take personally, interpreting them as God’s final, irrevocable judgments regarding our fundamental brokenness, hopelessness, worthlessness, etc. (pick your poison.)
But here’s the thing: God never said any of those things – and that’s where the issue of responsibility rears its rarely-welcome head. Responsibility for our attitudes. For our words, whether spoken or thought, whether more or less consciously – and so for our emotions, too. On the contrary, God (whatever God is for you) is available to each and every one of us at all times, and recently I feel strongly that it’s very much worth it to reach out to him, especially in our weakest moments. To ask for help with “calming these hands”, or perhaps even more so the self-loathing minds and words that we’ve come to honor as the truth of who we are.
Miko's Musings 