Offspring – Gone away – moments at a concert

When the Music Hits Hard

I’ve been sitting with this for a while. It started during that concert — before the chaos of recent weeks began to spiral, before I found myself swimming through the absurdities of life in real time. That night, one song hit me like a brick. The stripped-down version, raw and unfiltered, cracked something open.

I was in the amphitheater in Salt Lake City, watching my wife dance freely, reconnecting with pieces of her past. And there I was, suddenly overwhelmed by emotions I hadn’t touched in years. Memories surfaced — some beautiful, some brutal. A friend who collided with a cliff band while snowboarding high. Big Steve – the week of my Ironman in October of 2022.  Then the events in the now post-concert haze. And more recently, the devastating news that a former employee of mine had taken their own life.

Suicide is real. Depression is real. Crisis is real. And it’s far more present than most Americans are willing to acknowledge. Like its shadowed sibling — mass shootings — it’s a painful reality we keep trying to look away from. But we can’t afford to.

Kindness and empathy, when offered in naivete and with innocence, are often bulldozed by cynicism. But that doesn’t mean we stop offering them. We can’t erase all the darkness. But we can build better systems of support — ones that are meaningful, purposeful, and built to last.  

Previous posts on this subject here:

• https://happyinthehills.com/zentriathlete/2023/09/14/zentriathlete-blog/personal/if-you-need-help-stll-here/
• https://happyinthehills.com/zentriathlete/2023/01/03/zentriathlete-blog/checkins/2022-check-ins/2022-lessons-learned-reflections/
• https://happyinthehills.com/zentriathlete/2023/10/19/zentriathlete-blog/some-memories-are-harder-than-others/