Echoes of '97

It must have been in the summertime in 1996 or 1997, I was in my early teenage years and what I loved most was music. The classics, Nirvana, Metallica, Pink Floyd but also a lot of metal. I was listening non stop, probably copying around cassette tapes in my spare time. At night, my ritual was listening to FM Radio to fall asleep to. There is this vivid memory of me about to doze off when Pearl Jam’s masterful song “Alive” starts playing. By the time the chorus rolled in the second time, I was standing on my bed, wide eyed, blasting it as loud as possible. My love affair with Pearl Jam began.

I had been playing the guitar for a few year by then but mostly folk music in the local mandolin orchestra. By chance, I found out that the kid a few streets over played the drums, shortly thereafter we had a keyboarded, bass player and singer. My summer of ’97 was the summer of music, jamming and being Alive. 

I had long, blonde hair, mostly kept in a fashionable pony tail. To make the look perfect, I got 3 earrings in my left ear. 

Over the years I lost touch with music a little, my interests shifted, I left the band, graduated school, got my first job and lost the 3 earrings. 

As life was picking up steam, I moved to Singapore, got married, became a dad. Had my first couple of experiences in business, learned sales, became a manager. It surely seemed like the wild days were over. 

From time to time, someone would ask me. “Hey Ben, your ear… it looks like there are holes in your earlobe. Did you wear earrings?”

I’d usually just shrug it off “Yeah, I guess, that was a long time ago, a different life” 

Then there came a day a few years ago. I had just been in a heated business meeting and wasn’t feeling all that great. Before rushing to the next call, I decided to take a bathroom break. In the bathroom I glanced my own face in the mirror and it hit me like a lightning bolt. My face was crunched up like a fist, red in anger and just grumpy and unpleasant to look at. I stood there for a few seconds and stared. I thought about my life, my work, my levels of joy and fulfilment, my goals and aspirations, death. That’s when I noticed them. The 3 tiny holes in my left earlobe. 

That day I decided that I would get those earrings back. They would serve me as a powerful visual reminder. A reminder that life is supposed to be fun, that life is fleeting, that I am in control of how I want to live. A reminder that most daily stresses are not worth it, that life should be joyful, work should be joyful and I should never take myself too seriously.

Sure, I am in my forties now, sure I have teenage children, a wife, a mortgage and responsibilities as a business owner. That doesn’t mean though, that it’s all just serious now. 

Those earrings remind me of this every time I walk past a mirror and catch a glance. Alive.