I’m Changing, Arranging, I’m Changing Everything

The early-spring weather here in Des Moines was so incredibly perfect today that I decided to blow off my afternoon schedule and go for a long jog through Waterworks Park. I’m not clued in on all the local fauna, but the blooming lilacs, magnolias and cherry trees just won’t be ignored. Run … stop and admire … run … stop and inhale … run … fall down under a blooming bough and gaze upward … you get the idea.

So at one point in this lovely cycle, my trusty genius playlist cued up the song Reflections of My Life by the band Marmalade, a Scottish rock group that achieved critical acclaim in the late 1960s. I’ll forgive you if are too young to have ever heard of Marmalade, but I suggest you take just a few minutes to run the video performance above from back in the day. And if you want extra credit, click through to YouTube and read some of the nearly 5,000 comments the 4 million-plus viewers have posted about this video. I’ll give you 10 minutes!

Okay, so now that you are back, how did you feel when you listened to this song? Thoughtful? Reflective? Melancholy? Well, that’s exactly how I felt when I first heard it blaring from the speaker of my uncle Bobby’s souped-up 1957 Chevy at the tender age of 13.  I thought, what will be the “reflections of my life?” Will they “fill my eyes” with good times, or will they reflect “sad tomorrows?” And what about crying and dying and “changing, arranging, I’m changing everything?” Pretty deep stuff for 13, but there was, and still is, something about this song that elicits these deep contemplations.

So snap back to the present for a moment, and consider what all of this means today. For me at least, it’s all about what I want my life to stand for when I’ve “shuffled off this mortal coil,” as Shakespeare via Hamlet so artfully describes death. Will anything I have done inspire a future generation to a greater understanding of themselves or the world around them? Anyone who aspires to be a leader must answer this question.