July - Holes

Good day dear readers!

We are back with a new blog post for July! It’s finally summer break for us here and we’re enjoying every second of it!

July is a busy month for the both of us, but in the best way possible. We’ll spend almost half of the month together and because we won’t be home much, this text is written earlier than usual.

 

Lina came up with the song for this post: “Holes“ by Passenger (it was time again, wasn’t it?). It’s a very special song to both of us because it is one of the first songs we learned to play on the ukulele. While being fairly simple to play, it has become our go to song whenever we play together and has accompanied us over more than a year now.

 

It should be no secret to anyone at this point, that we are big Passenger fans. I once asked my dad, who is very talented musically, why he doesn’t write his own songs. He said that he isn’t that good with lyrics and that – and I quote – “We can’t all be Passenger“.
I wholeheartedly agree with my dad‘s opinion. Mike Rosenberg’s lyrics are masterpieces, every single one of his songs is beautifully written and performed with such incredible emotion. I wish I could be anywhere near as good, let me tell you.

 

About a year ago, Passenger hosted live streams on his official YouTube channel, where he’d talk a bit about the history of some songs too. Many of his pieces were written while travelling and meeting new, interesting strangers who told him stories of their life or just simply inspired him. While he didn’t mention any specific story to “Holes“ I like to think about all the random people who could have been a source of inspiration for this song.

The first and second verse tell the tales of two different humans, a man who was left with nothing after his house burnt down and a woman whose husband left her alone with her children. They both have suffered great loss, and even though they miss what they had, they keep going anyway.

 

Now we've got holes in our hearts, yeah we've got holes in our lives

Well we've got holes, we've got holes but we carry on.

 

Well not all of us have been through these scenarios, but I’m sure we’ve all had things happen to us, that we wish we could undo. I often think, what could have gone different in my life, what I could have done different. But however I twist and turn these thoughts, the things I think about are now long gone, they have happened already, they are in the past. I can’t change them anymore.

 

But I can change the way I look at them.

 

Look, I know this sounds way easier than it is and also very preachy (and I would be lying if I said that it has always worked for me), but once you have changed your point of view in a way that helps you to see these things as events of the past, parts of your destiny even ;) , you can go into the future sleeping easier.

I myself can be a very resentful person, depending on what you did to me or if you decided to be very, very stupid and try something idiotic with my friends! (Like, come on, you really expect me to just watch you do that?!) But I try to take this little life lesson into account and live life more relaxed and take things the way fate throws them at me. In most situations anyways.

It’s like the proverb: „if life gives you lemons, make lemonade“. Take what you get and make the best out of it.

 

To be honest, this whole thing kind of goes against what I’ve been telling myself. I am more of a „if you don’t like something, change it!“ or „nothing has to stay the way it is, just watch me change it!“ kind of person. But I have found a quote, that captures both these things perfectly in a way that works great for me:

 

„If you don’t like something, change it; if you can‘t change it, change the way you think about it.“

 

This quote is by Mary Engelbreit and I saw this on my dad’s pinboard just yesterday. It harmonizes so well with the way I want to live my life. And it also goes hand in hand with Passenger’s „Holes“.
We may have had unfortunate, terrible things happen to us and we may bear scars from these experiences, but despite all these holes in our hearts, all these holes in our lives, we carry on.

 

Whatever the future might have in store for you, please carry on! Don’t get discouraged and know that there will always be something or someone worth living for in the time ahead. It will always pay off!

 

 

Love, Ina

Hi everybody, happy July :)

 

It’s officially summer and I can’t tell you how good it feels to write that. I am so happy to write about this month’s song because it really does have a special place in my heart. Here we go – “Holes” by Passenger.

 

Well we've got holes in our hearts, yeah we've got holes in our lives

Well we've got holes, we've got holes but we carry on

 

You gotta know, this song is especially special because it’s kind of a friendship something song between Ina, her sister and me. It’s like our go-to ukulele song. And even though it was just a good and not-too-difficult-to-play song at first, it’s way more than that now.

I just came back from the holiday camp where Ina, her sister and I met seven years ago (seven years!!!). It’s also where we started playing “Holes” on our ukuleles. We also played it this year on the last-evening-of-camp-concert (let’s just call it that, would be way too much if I tried to explain everything about that camp). What I want to say is that it couldn’t fit better than for this month.

 

We’ve got holes but we carry on. Every time I come back from this camp it feels like there is a little hole in my heart. Being there with all these people which I only see in that very one week of the year – or at least most of them – and spending a whole week just with them, playing team games, joking around, singing, telling stories,… makes my heart so so so insanely happy. And then when I come home I just feel a little bit lost, sad about the week already being over and not sure where to continue. But with every day, with every little thing that reminds me I’m back home again, it gets a little better, until it’s “only” a great memory. Life goes on and we have to carry on with it too.

 

That was just one example. So often we come across times when we feel like a part of us is out of order and we don’t know how to handle it. Doesn’t matter whether it’s the feeling you get after coming home from a really beautiful vacation, when something doesn’t turn out as you wished to, when being let down by somebody or from setbacks that make you feel uncertain. Can be anything. The point is that at these moments you feel like you’re stuck, don’t know how to go on, unsure about what’s to come. But think back - how often have you felt like that? How often have you thought you could never make it through? Look at you, reading this. Doesn’t matter if today was crap, the best day ever or anything in between, but the fact that you’re here, having made it through every single one of these moments. See, gotcha ;) And if you’re just going through something difficult and you might not see it yet, you still have to believe that it will get better because it got better all these times before.

 

Here we are again, back at the “everything happens for a reason”. Because it does, I can’t write about this enough. Every minor little setback has played a part in where you are now. Every one of them has taught you something. Every one of them has given you a little more strength. That may sound kitschy to some of you but it’s true, don’t even try to convince me other way xD I know, sometimes things happen and you’re like “What the f***”, but eventually some day you will see what it was meant for. Just as everything good teaches you something, the not so good does too. At some point it will make sense, like a big big puzzle being put together piece by piece. Only if we don’t give up.

So yes, stupid things happen and there are times when you feel like crap, but there will always be a way to make it through. Even if our hearts are a little broken at certain places, a little cracked or hurt, they still are just right as a whole. Everything you’ve experienced until now is part of you and will always be. That’s what it’s all about. Growing, learning new things, trying new things, failing, getting back up and carrying on.

 

Well sometimes you can't change and you can't choose

And sometimes it seems you gain less than you lose

Now we've got holes in our hearts, yeah we've got holes in our lives

Well we've got holes, we've got holes but we carry on

 

Yeah, sometimes you don’t really have a choice and you just have to go with what’s coming at you. Sometimes life, metaphorically speaking, throws problems at you and you don’t see the purpose in it. Sometimes it feels like you’re being left with nothing. But still you carry on. Whether you notice it or not, whether you do it with intention or not, circumstances change again and again and we start to see things differently. It often takes longer, way longer than we would want it to, but it does happen. So I guess our job is just to believe that this is true. Believe in ourselves and maybe a little bit in the invisible things around us happing too and we should be good. It’s not easy, buuut it’s doable.

 

I don’t really know if there’s anything more to say, I guess the song says it all itself. It’s a beautiful song, please go on put it on one of your playlists :)) Maybe I can even talk Ina into recording our version and uploading it here. Anyways - this is for everyone who feels ridiculously happy, glad, content, cheerful, excited, okay, uncertain, sad, angry, lost, alone or like a fat dormouse trapped under the dustbin. This is for everyone because we all have holes in our hearts and still carry on. We all can be proud of ourselves for that.

I hope you’re all having a great summer.

 

Lots of love, Lina :)