Shuffle all yet always me

I recently accidentally pushed to shuffle all the music in my iTunes library instead of just shuffling one of my current playlists. (Yes, I still buy music instead of paying for a streaming service. I’m stubborn? I like to be in control of what I’m listening to instead of letting an algorithm choose music for me based on my history. Why? I have no idea. It doesn’t really make sense to be stuck in 2010, but here I am.) (And I know it is called Music now, but iTunes is such a habit to say.)

And since that accidental entire music library shuffle, I have a few times intentionally shuffled my entire music library when I am alone in the car. And it brings such powerful memories.

A VeggieTales song will come on, and I’m brought back to my childhood, of singing those silly songs as a teenager while hiking with friends or jumping on trampolines.

A Disney story comes on, and I’m reminded of how many hours my children used to listen to those audiobooks. Whenever I didn’t want them to watch tv, but they were bored, I would play those stories in the background, and they would listen as they colored or played.

A song in French comes on, and suddenly I’m in my first year in Gabon. I’m trying to acclimate to life without a clue of how much I would grow there, of what I was capable of becoming as a woman once finished with childbearing, or of how much I would love the people I met.

A song in Portuguese plays, and I’m in the car stuck in traffic in São Paulo with my family listening to Radio Rock singing along with everyone to see who had figured out the most lyrics to that particular song.

A song by Maná or Juanes pours out of the speakers, and suddenly Jeff and I are dating again, and he is sharing with me the Spanish culture he got to know on his mission and how much he loves it.

All these songs in this music library that I’ve been building for almost two decades are flowing around me as I drive from one place to another, and wow. It is hard not to cry.

And the tears are a bit sad but also a bit happy. I’ve grown and changed. I have regrets from some choices, and I have great pride in others. And everything will keep changing, and that is hopeful and overwhelming at the same time.

It feels like the versions of myself that I have been before I changed are all still around. There isn't just one me, and I was like that before, and I am like this now. But that I'm carrying around all of the kinds of me. And different situations require different kinds of me, and just like pushing shuffle on the entire music library, I push shuffle on my selves.

And because I'm thinking about life, a poem came out.

Always Me

Small, round,

under the ground,

light as cream,

its potential a dream.

Brown and furry,

my future coming in a hurry.

Covered in dirt!

Does change always hurt?

Reaching—I'm strong,

but bright light feels so wrong.

. . . not wrong—just new.

The sun is a cue.

A cue, a sign,

development is nigh.

Wind pushes me around,

and rain shoves me down.

Yet I bend and not break.

I learn what I can take.

New branches emerge.

Can I handle that surge?

Unrecognizable yet me—

what does it mean to be?

Always a tree.

I'm more than you see.