What Your Life & Pandora Have in Common
This is going to seem like an advertisement for Pandora®, but I promise it’s not: last time I checked, they don’t send me any cash. It’s more that, while at the gym, I listen to Pandora® on stations such as (sigh) “Pop & Hip Hop Power Workout,” or “Heads Will Roll (A-Trak Remix).” Before you give me that look, last time I checked, only Yahweh—and my cats—can judge me. Loving me means loving all of me.
But Pandora® as an analogy for creating a life you love, came to me after one particular frustrating workout. Frustrating, because Pandora® on that particular day, had decided that I had a huge hard-on for Danish singer Medina. Pandora® is incorrect. I think she’s fine, whatever, but I’m not switching teams for her or anything, so the sixth time they started playing one of her songs as I was trying to lift, I wanted to scream. (Pandora® also thinks I have an unhealthy obsession with Pitbull and to that I say, oh don’t give me that look. Jesus El Senor knows what’s in my heart, ay!)
Anyways, instead of losing what’s left of my sh*t, I gave Medina’s umpteenth song about being depressed in Denmark love a shot, and for playing nice, Pandora® rewarded me with a song I actually liked. For the rest of that workout I experimented with not cursing out Pandora® when they gave me a song I didn’t immediately adore and hey, why not, actually listening to some different artists, and, in return, Pandora® experimented with giving me new music that allowed me to kill it. #itotallyliftson
Which got me thinking. What if you saw your life as a Pandora® station? Cheesy, but hold on. For example, when you on your journey meet new and different types of people, experiences, emotions…what if you accepted them and followed wherever they lead you? Instead of dismissing what seems foreign in favor of the (boring) safety of the (unrewarding) known, what would happen if you forced yourself outside of your (un)comfortable zone? What would happen if you kept building on those experiences, emotions and people, eventually creating a different way of living? What would happen if you lost the fear that keeps you unsatisfied by what you know?
This analogy occurred to me because this year alone, I’ve ended a few friendships of ten plus years. Though I’d argue that by the end, they were more habit than actual friendship. Bad habits, by the way. Boring habits. And, in the place of those depressing, dead habits, I started allowing myself to meet new people with whom I shared similar goals/interests/ideas. I reconnected with friends from childhood. I resolved to be open to meeting new people and seeing where those encounters would take me, and I have to say…I wish I had done this years ago. I wish that years ago I had stopped wasting my time with bad habits that kept me conditioned to think that only one way of life was possible. Especially because that way of life hadn’t been cutting it for a long time. It’s no coincidence that as I cleared the driftwood out of my life, I made more room for amazing people and experiences to appear.
Some of you are thinking I’m cold as ice for admitting, in public, that I ended friendships but I’d rather be honest and end it, than have those fake Vaguebook “friendships” wherein we never hang out, we never speak on the phone, we’re basically completely uninterested in each other’s lives… but we’re friends because we like each other’s status updates. Um, no. That’s not friendship, that’s some kind of half-assed mutual masturbation.
I’m using this Pandora® analogy as a way for us all to have the courage to see our lives removed from the conditioning we’ve been subjected to, by childhood, religion, friends, family, society and the like. It’s about acknowledging how many other choices there are, and being open to experiencing choices that can take us down very interesting, if frequently scary, roads. If you think about how much of your current life is based upon advertising, fitting in with friends and maintaining your social status, for example, and you’re wondering how to get in touch with the most authentic part of yourself that wants something real, even as you’re not sure what that means, or where it might lead you…what are you waiting for? You’ve wasted enough time making other people happy, right? Also, I promise: Medina will always be there for you. #oy