I write this weekly post about recruiting for work, and I was originally going to share this post there. But today I decided I need to stop saving my good stuff for work and actually share it with you. Work doesn’t get to have the best of me when the world is so in need of the best of us right now. It’s been too long.
I don’t know if you watch “The Last of Us”, but in a recent episode, there is a sweet moment between the main character Ellie and her best friend Dina. I hope I don’t give anything away if you aren’t caught up on the show, but they are hiding out in a broken-down music store in Seattle, biding their time before trying to exact revenge for the death of a loved one. Ellie finds an acoustic guitar in a dust-covered case and starts playing lightly and singing the song “Take On Me.” It’s a song from the 80s, and I was initially surprised by the choice.
Ellie sits on a bench with a gaping hole in the wall behind her and the half-destroyed city in the background. Dina sits at Ellie’s feet and watches with tears in her eyes as Ellie delicately and softly sings the song. It’s a beautiful moment they share amid destruction and loss. A fleeting moment of connection, squeezed in between everything else.
There’s something about someone singing with just an acoustic guitar. It’s stripped down. Bare. Raw. And so imperfect and human. Reminds me how exposed I used to feel trying to sing in front of anyone, even someone I was very close to. Baring your soul like that is terrifying, because I always felt like I was exposing the real me.
Admittedly, I didn’t think much of the lyrics to this song when I was a kid. But hearing it again yesterday in the context of the show’s storyline, it struck me what a poignant choice it was for that moment in the show. And I also think, for this moment in time.
“We’re talking away
I don’t know what I’m to say
I’ll say it anyway
Today is another day to find you
Shyin’ away
Oh, I’ll be comin’ for your love, okay
Take on me
(Take on me)
Take me on
(Take on me)
I’ll be gone
In a day or two”
We are surrounded by change and chaos, and instability. And although that doesn’t take the form of an eight-foot cauliflower-headed monster, it’s just as scary.
“So needless to say
I’m odds and ends
But I’ll be stumblin’ away
Slowly learnin’ that life is okay
Say after me
It’s no better to be safe than sorry
Take on me
(Take on me)
Take me on
(Take on me)
I’ll be gone
In a day or two”
What I loved about this moment in the show is how perfectly it illustrates the fragility of our shared humanity and the forces surrounding us that make it so hard to choose not to become monsters. That even in the midst of absolute chaos, our humanity is still right there, needing only a simple instrument to be revealed.
When we feel like the world as we know it is crumbling, we get to choose to reach, rather than to pull away. To pick up the guitar and bare your soul, or let it stay in the case. To become complacent, or to fight. We get to choose to take each other on.
“All the things that you say, yeah
Is it life or just to play my worries away?
You’re all the things I’ve got to remember
You’re shyin’ away
I’ll be comin’ for you anyway
Take on me”
