Blue moons

If you looked up at the sky this past New Year’s Eve and thought about what you were missing, you were not alone.

The first adult music I remember purchasing was Ella Fitzgerald’s Rodgers and Hart Songbook. I was 17 years old then, working in ‘Harmony Hut’ when a gay, hyper-romantic, pot-smoking colleague named Ryan insisted that I listen to some of his favorite popular standards.

I was wary, Ryan had previously foisted Persichetti and Xenakis on me, but when I heard Ella’s interpretation of Blue Moon, I was hooked. Her clear voice and perfect phrasing conveyed sadness and longing, while the song itself articulated my naive yearning for a romantic connection:

Blue Moon,
You know just what I was there for,
You heard me saying a prayer for,
Someone I really could care for.

Lorenz Hart loved triple rhymes. Okay, I admit it’s a bit soppy – but I was only 17 – and up to my ears in soppiness.

When I was a kid and for a long time after, finding the ‘right person’ was the sole animator of my being. I would throw over any plans at the prospect of a date. People could predict my moods by whether or not I was seeing someone. If I’d met a guy, I was giddy; but if the object of my attentions had rejected or ignored me, my mood turned instantly black.

It’s no accident that I first took drugs in frustration over a break-up. Despair of never finding a mate justified most of my relapses – including the last one. Somehow I’d become monomaniacal: convinced that having a lover meant you were okay and that not having one was an obvious flaw in character.

It seemed self-evident to me that happy people were in relationships and miserable people, like me, were not. It never occurred to me that the direction of causality might be reversed; that maybe miserable people had chased off any likely prospect with their sour dispositions. Only recently, by taking a step back from these burdensome assumptions and by letting go of the supposed ‘need’ for love — have I begun to secure a measure of serenity and satisfaction.

But am I really free of love’s demands? Can anybody liberate himself from something so fundamental to what makes us human? Babies instinctively smile before they even open their eyes. Children raised in crowded orphanages by inattentive caretakers are subject to a host of attachment-related disorders.

Isolated teens are more likely to become depressed, delinquent or addicted to substances. Unmarried adults have increased odds of developing chronic medical conditions. Older adults without spouses are more likely to be hospitalized for depression and die younger than their partnered peers. Clearly we need love – or at least connection – in order to survive. For an interesting discussion of this need, see episode 1 of This Emotional Life.

Today I am a sadder and wiser man than the one captivated by Ella 30 years ago. Life has not always treated me kindly, but she has been gentle when handing out consequences. Old friends find me paler, more bruised, with more salt than pepper hair, a too-often furrowed brow, questioning eyes and a soft middle.

In relationships I am more guarded, but less easily disappointed. I don’t idealise nor do I expect quite so much from people. But when I glimpse the moon on a starry night the vague romantic longings renew themselves: I still want to find great love.

Last week while looking up at the astronomic Blue Moon, the eponymous song sifted through my brain. So much and so little have changed since I first heard it. I remain the romantic I was once, only not quite so hopeless.

I still want someone to share my life with, to be challenged by and to grow with; but my sense of what that relationship might look like has grown broader. Friends can challenge us and build love in ways as meaningful and less fraught than a partner may. Somehow ‘fraught’ just doesn’t have the allure it once had in my ‘Blue Moon’ days.

I have learned to stop measuring my life by what it lacks. If I get a little sad now and then, I remind myself it is just a feeling and don’t let it mushroom-cloud into something unmanageable. Even when I am without something I want badly, I continue to sustain my connections with others.

The wisdom of the twelve step programs teaches me to value – and use! – whatever I possess, no matter how small or nebulous. Today I am blessed to have experience, health, ethics, curiosity, faith and intimate relationships.

At one point in recovery I thought that merely cataloguing these things was enough. But I can’t survive – let alone recover – on a diet of hope alone. To be sure, hope is a necessary ingredient of well-being; it’s just not a sufficient one. Only by actively cultivating a life of meaning and balance does happiness becomes less elusive.

Low days are common around the holidays – at least they are for me. Fellow travellers, I salute you, and pray your dark days are infrequent as a blue moon.