As I was growing up, there was a singer whose music really struck a chord with me: John Denver. There’s a story behind one of his songs that I really love, “Annie’s Song”, and it offers an inspiring life lesson.

John Denver wrote “Annie’s Song” at a moment of grave distress in his relationship with Annie, who was his wife at the time. They were having a big fight and ended up temporarily separating. Around that time, John Denver was on a ski lift in Aspen, Colorado. It was in those 10 minutes on the ski lift, in that pain that he was feeling as his relationship wasn’t going well, that he composed this song.

It’s incredible if you think about what we can take away from this. The idea of using dark and difficult moments, emotions like pain, as a source of redemptive possibilities. A source to lift us — just like that ski lift — to our highest potential. To do our life’s greatest work during our darkest moments, by redirecting that pain and energy for something really heartfelt and good.

Moreover, how fascinating to think that your life’s most lasting and beautiful work may be just 10 minutes away.  You just never know when inspiration may strike, or how unbounded the possibilities are in every moment. Our creative genius could be unleashed in just 10 minutes, if our spirit is suitably stirred from within.

John Denver, of course, had to be prepared for it. After all, he was already an accomplished singer-songwriter. But it was not just the mastery of the craft, it was the mastery of the craft meeting a very difficult painful moment meeting the aspiration of turning it into a source of inspiration. And perhaps also meeting with that environment that he was in, on a ski lift, that must have given him a sense of upliftment as well, being there in the lap of nature.

I will make one confession to you now. While he wrote that song perhaps with the feeling of human, romantic love that it evoked in him, I’ve often found the song to speak to my hunger for a deeper, expansive conversation with the Universe, with the Creative Spirit, with the Love that flows every time life connects with life.

Warmly,
Hitendra

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