People Who Love People

I usually start thinking about what I’ll write in my Friday Blog on Tuesday. By Friday I’m usually still thinking about what I’ll write in my Friday Blog. This week is an anomaly. On Wednesday, ideas started popping into my head. I’ve jotted them down, providing myself with a small bank of ideas. I’m not ready to commit to any of them; invoking one of the many privileges of retirement: decreased commitment requirement. I finally decided to go with the idea inspired by this week’s “Song-In-My-Mind.” In all honesty, almost all of my Friday Blogs (almost, but not all) are inspired by that week’s “Song-In-My-Mind.”

This week I’ve been saying the word “beautiful” a lot as I catch sight of the many flowers blooming in my yard. The word “beautiful” opened the door to the song “People” (composed by Jule Styne with lyrics by Bob Merrill and sung by Barbra Streisand in the Broadway play, Funny Girl). It must be a violent process for these songs when they pop into my mind because the lyrics rarely arrive intact. In my mind, the word “need” is with replaced with the word “love” in the lines, “People, People who need people, Are the luckiest people in the world.” Oh yeah, the word “luckiest” is replaced with the word “loveliest.” I find the use of the word “people,” and the words love/loveliest (I take full responsibility for this as it is not what Mr. Merrill wrote) redundant and annoying. Songs-that-pop-into-my-mind have a grand capacity and wide range of emotion invocation. Some songs in my mind invoke irritation, and some invoke peaceful serenity. Some songs even inspire me to sing-along loudly and dance wildly. My children have asked that I refrain from doing the latter in public and/or their presence.

Beautiful flowers got me thinking about beautiful people and the door to the “People” song was flung wide open. As I’ve suggested, I’m not a big fan of this song (or its current place in my mind), but I’m a HUGE fan of beautiful people, and I’m hugely blessed to have (and have had) many, many beautiful people in my life.

I’m hugely blessed to have so many beautiful flowers in my yard. I love their different colors. I love how they bloom at different levels and how their blooms are so diverse. I love how some are best appreciated from up close and others are best appreciated from a distance. I love their uniqueness and individuality. Hey, that’s what I love about people, too; particularly people who love people.

I’m going to go out in the yard and look at beautiful flowers (I might even smell one or two). Life is good.