Lessons in lyrics

I love music so much it lives in my bones …pity the lyrics don’t make it to my brain. I have always been useless when it comes to getting the lyrics right!

The year Bad Moon Rising came out -1969 – I was a grand total of three years old. And honestly, that’s probably why I spent my entire childhood (and a good chunk of adulthood) singing “Hasie a bad moon rising!” with full confidence. Creedence Clearwater Revival might have sung the original, but I sang my version with heart.

I smiled silently last week during our Variety Class, while we were lifting and gliding and sweating to my 80’s playlist. I couldn’t help thinking back to that one time in high school, when Delien, my older sister, almost had a fit when she heard me singing, “I just can’t get it out” instead of “I just can’t get enough.” To this day, I still slip up sometimes with that legendary song by Depeche Mode.

So, yes, I always stand in awe when Jacqueline and many of the girls belt out the lyrics during Cardio Fun or Rebounding class – they seem to know every word perfectly! Especially that “Hit the floor” number we performed at our Flashmob on Thursday: “Everybody hit the floor, let’s get it on. You gotta move your body…!!!!”

Even when I’m the one writing the lyrics, I seem to get it wrong! Last Saturday, when we took on the Muddy Princess race at Kralinbergh, I thought it would be a very good idea if our group of 28 had our own running cadence to chant…I had it all figured out, and wrote the keywords on the palms of my hands…

“I don’t know but I’ve been told, Mirna’s girls are brave and bold. We climb high and we crawl low. Through the mud we fear no foe…!

We don’t stop and we don’t quit, strong and sassy full of ‘grit’. Mud on the face and joy in the soul, Mirna’s girls are on a roll…”

Nice, huh? Except that I kept mixing up the lyrics and forgetting the words, so we ended up shouting “Jam blikke vis blikke”, instead …

…But I have fond memories of misheard lyrics too…When Eswee and Mariné were toddlers, they attended Rosy’s Playschool. I think Eswee was about five years old at the time. One day, after school, they hopped into the car, buzzing with excitement, and said: “Mamma, ons het vandag ‘Skatta Hô’ geleer. Kom ons sing dit saam!” Obviously, I replied, “Mamma ken nie hierdie liedjie nie Eswee…Hoe klink dit?” Very frustrated with me, Eswee said: “Ja, man, mammaaa …’Skatta Hô!”…”Skatta Hô world, in His Hands, Skatta Hô world in his hands…”

We’ve all heard jokes and funny lines about misheard lyrics …And I think at some point, we all mix up lyrics. We hear what we think we hear. We fill in the blanks, mumble through the parts we don’t know, and carry on confidently as if we’re part of the band.

But the funny thing about misheard lyrics is this: We’re not trying to get it wrong. We’re just hearing what we’re ready to hear… or what we expect to hear. And here’s the deeper part – we do the same thing in life.

We don’t always listen properly. Not to the songs, and not to the people around us either. Sometimes, we hear words but not the feeling behind them. We catch the noise, but we miss the note. We listen to reply, and not always to understand.

Because, if we can get something as simple as a song lyric wrong, imagine how often we get people wrong – simply because we don’t really listen. I think one of the most important lessons I have learned in the studio this year, is this – We can’t succeed by simply dumping information on our members; we also need to learn how to listen to them…

Because in our haste to be heard and make an impact, so often we end up forgetting that listening is one of the most important communicative acts we can undertake. I came upon this beautiful quote by life-coach, Eric Allenbaugh:

“Listen with your eyes – your hearing will improve. Listen as you would like to be listened to …”

Katy Murphy’s new book, “You’re Not Listening”, suggests that many of us – absorbed in our own thoughts and dreams – have lost the ability to listen. She says: “Everyone is interesting, if you ask the right questions. If someone is dull or uninteresting, it’s on you …To be able to really listen, you have to get rid of your own ego, your own thoughts. The art of listening is really the art of being human …”

I know I need to listen better, all the time. You probably do too …We are all talking, posting, sharing, performing …but are we hearing? We nod, we scroll, we “uh-huh” our way through conversations, but half the time, our minds are already halfway to the next thing.

And maybe that’s where the real lesson lies.

Listening isn’t just hearing. It’s paying attention to what’s not being said. It’s noticing the hesitation behind someone’s “I’m fine.” It’s hearing the sigh after the joke.
It’s catching the silence between the words.

Listening takes effort. It means being present.

Just like misheard lyrics make us laugh, misheard lives can make us drift apart.

And it’s not just about listening better to others – it’s about listening to ourselves, too. That small, quiet voice that says, ‘slow down, breath, this matters, you need rest, you’re enough, you’re doing okay’ …

So, here’s my little reminder – to myself, and to anyone else who sings confidently but sometimes incorrectly:  Let’s listen a little better – to the words, the pauses, the tone, the sighs, the laughter, and the silence between them.

Maybe then, the world would feel a little softer. Maybe our relationships would grow deeper. Maybe, when we listen correctly, whether it’s a song lyric or someone’s heart – everything would make a lot more sense.

Music has this beautiful thing called silence between notes – that’s what makes the melody works. Maybe our lives need that too: more time-outs, and more quiet moments where we simply listen – to what’s being said, and to what’s not.

Because sometimes, the magic isn’t in getting the words right – it’s in hearing the meaning behind them. Turns out life is a lot like my singing: messy, imperfect, and a little off-key …but worth listening to anyway.

So, I’ll probably forever keep singing my wrong lyrics …but I’ll try, I’ll really try, to listen a little better…

Yours in fitness

Mirna
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