It always amuses me when a song that has no meaning to me jumps in to tell me something.  And I usually listen.  I mean, if a totally random song to which I have no emotional attachment shows up out of nowhere at the perfect time, there has to be a reason.  Right?

Anyway, yesterday I was on the campus of my alma mater, the University of Washington, to hear a Political Science faculty panel discussion about next week’s midterm elections.  I took the light rail from my office downtown, hopped off at Husky Stadium, and walked up Rainier Vista to campus.  On a clear day, true to its name, Rainier Vista provides an unobstructed view of the mountain, framed by the Gothic architecture of campus, with Drumheller Fountain lying at its base.  It’s beautiful.  Yesterday was cloudy though, giving no hint of the mountain lying behind the clouds.   Seemed more fitting, somehow.  The past few days have been strange.

I was wearing headphones, but my playlist had been exhausted, and random songs began to appear from, I assume, some sort of Spotify channel.  My phone was in my pocket, and I was too indifferent to change the music.  I wasn’t really concentrating on it anyway.   Instead, I was thinking about my son, and how he is starting to look at colleges.  How I hope that he will find a place where he is as happy as I was during my time at UW.   How he will be in college, and able to vote in the 2020 election, and that I hope the political climate will be better than it is now.  I remembered seeing Jesse Jackson speak on campus, in what must have been the fall of my freshman year, right on Rainier Vista where I was now walking.

One of the things I always love about being on campus is that it is a touchstone — a reminder of my younger self.  I mean, music always does that anyway (“Express Yourself, 2012 Style”).   Of course, back then, it was hard to picture that I would ever be as old as I am now, but here we are.

My mind clicked back to the music for a second, in time to hear that Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train” was playing.  Just in time to catch the line:  “How on earth did I get so jaded/Life’s mystery seems so faded”.

I sat with that one for a moment.  I have been in my head a lot lately.    And while I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as jaded, I do have my moments.  I can always use a reminder to focus on the good things which are always there, even if they are momentarily obscured.  Just like Mount Rainier, behind those darn clouds.