The first time I heard this song, I was watching the movie Notting Hill. I fell in love with it before it was even over. For me, it’s about the duality of our own nature. The good and the bad. The sacred and the profane. The yin and the yang. The reality of life. We all have conflicting emotions, but sometimes society has a way of convincing us that we shouldn’t. We are often taught to “suck it up” when things get tough. Being angry or depressed is seen as a flaw instead of what it really is…a natural emotion that we all need to express. A friend said to me recently that anyone who is happy all the time is either delusional or overly medicated. She’s right. It’s unnatural to be happy all the time. Unfortunately, that’s what society seems to want from us. So when we are sad or angry, we feel like we have to hide it from the world. We put on a happy face and pretend everything is fine. Even in relationships, we often feel like we have to hide the worst part of ourselves in an effort to protect those we love. Sometimes we our conditioned to do that because when we’ve been honest, people turned their backs on us. After it happens a few times, you come to expect it from everyone. We fear driving people away if we can’t offer them some cheery thought. The truth is sometimes life really sucks. But the flip side to that is that it can also be beautiful. That’s just the nature of the world.

We are often our own worst enemy. When we are caught up in our own emotional turmoil, we can’t see anything but that. And when we can’t see through the darkness, it feels like it will never end.  We see our own worst traits and fears. We see all our faults magnified. We are too much in our own heads to see the good or the positive, whether it’s in ourselves or the world around us. We can’t see what we have to offer to others. If we’re lucky, we have friends or family who can help us through it. They will remind us that there is light after the dark. They will show us the good we can’t see in ourselves. They accept us for who we are and don’t turn away when we show them a side that isn’t all sun and cheer and hope. They will laugh with us and cry with us. They will sit with us as we scream at an unfair world and they will hold us when we have nothing left to say. In this song, “she” has someone out there who will hold her up and hold her hand, no matter what.