Work, Joy, and The Beatles

"As I turned up my mom's record player loud, what I heard changed my life. I heard The Beatles making mistakes. I heard them fumbling around to find their genius... It had The Beatles trying different tempos, different lyrics and different ideas. It had The Beatles fighting. I heard The Beatles failing. I heard The Beatles working. 

"But learning that they didn't have perfect blueprints from their genius was a revelation. It inspired me to start to practice and rehearse the stupid ideas that I had." -Penn Jillette, in his CNN Opinion piece today, Beatles, bootlegs and Vermeer. 

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I'm ok with consciously placing things on a pedestal (e.g. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds), but the danger comes when we don't stop to recognize how much hard work went into those things getting up there. Sometimes it's easy to think whatever we admire just walked into that position, inherently just being all that we look up to. But in reality, anything admirable in this world requires a lot of work. Attaining and maintaining. 

Look at how easy it is to break a bad habit vs. making a good habit. How easy it is to make a mess vs. keep a room clean. This world just demands work, constantly. It's as constant as our need for nourishment, and sleep. 

Food, and sleep. They are just so good. (You guys, I'm such a grump over here without them.) And it's the same story for work. 

I think this world demands so much work, because work makes joy. And genius. And all things good. God sent us here to be happy. He sent us here to work to be happy, because that would make the truest kind of joy.

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I just kind of loved reading this perspective on The Beatles and their work today. The Beatles sing to my soul. It has a lot to do with my dad, and the way that his career in radio combined with his trivia mind placed 60s music into my roots. He'd turn up the radio anytime a different song came on his oldies station, and tell me the year the song came out, where he was when he first heard it, a fact about the recording or the band, and then he'd listen or sing. I'd listen and watch. I loved the way he loved it all, and remembered his life through those songs and the memories and moments they brought him back to.

When I lived in London, I turned up The Beatles every time I ran through Hyde Park. I mean, how could I not? That just felt right. And when Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds came on, I ran with more joy than I ever had before or since. That song will always take me back to Hyde Park, to London. To a time when I realized how big the world was and how much I loved it. 

I don't remember where that particular Beatles song takes my dad back to. But I know The Beatles take both of us places, along with millions of others. Their work, turned into their genius, changed the world.