I was in graduate school when I first heard Joni Mitchell singing Both Sides Now. I enjoyed the song but missed the message. This is a video of Mitchell singing that song nearly a half century ago.

Graduate school in the late 60s was time consuming while the world was coming apart due to racism, the Vietnam War, and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Looking back upon that time, my wish to go to Edinburgh, Scotland for a year of post-graduate studies might have been merely hoping that the world would change for the better when I returned. Nonetheless, when I did return to the States, the war in Southeast Asia had gotten worse both there and here in America. Regardless, I had to move from being a student to being employed and working for a living.

A half century later, I am in my mid-70s. Tragically, I am fully aware that America is not the city on the hill acting as a beacon to the world, at least not a positive one.

The city on the hill

Interestingly, as I listened to Joni Mitchell singing Both Sides Now, at the other end of her life, she has aged. Apparently, she can see and sing Both Sides Now with more clarity.

Life is seen from a bipolarity perspective. Sometimes, we win, and, sometimes, we lose. Success is mixed with failure. I get that. There is the reality that my being a dreamer often faces the realism of unrealized dreams. Life is the mix of the agony and ecstasy. As I reflect upon my life from both sides now, two people have helped me deal with reality…in a most positive manner.

At first glance, Ivan Denisovich, who is the main protagonist in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, doesn’t seem to be a very positive aide for me or anyone else. Ivan was a prisoner in a Russian gulag. However, amid the despair of enduring years in the cold of Siberia, he was able to face reality and be grateful for blessings as he perceived them.

Ivan would hide a piece of moldy bread in his bed before being forced to go out into the winds of winter to build a wall. After a day of labor, Ivan would return to his bed. He would munch on the bread and reflect upon his day. He was thankful that he was working on the side of the wall, which protected him from the cold Siberian winds.

Was Solzhenitsyn’s novel really about Ivan Denisovich or was it an autobiography? Regardless of which, it is an example about how to live life no matter how barbaric the circumstances might be.

Ivan

My other guidepost to life and the reality of existence is Randy Pausch and The Last Lecture. Randy was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He gave his Last Lecture less than a year before he died of pancreatic cancer.

Ivan and Randy weren’t that divergent in either their lives or how they lived them. Neither had control of what happened to them. Ivan was a prisoner in a gulag in Siberia, and Randy was a prisoner in the gulag of pancreatic cancer. Nevertheless, Randy said, “It’s not about the cards you’re dealt, but how you play the hand.”

Randy

Joni Mitchell’s song, Both Sides Now, contains this haunting stanza:

Essentially, it doesn’t make any difference what people say or think about how I have changed. I’m honest and true to myself. What drives me are choices that I have made. As with the song, “…something’s lost, but something’s gained in living every day.”

My only request of you is to listen and watch the two videos and ponder the meaning to you of the song, Both Sides Now.

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