Needle and Haystack Life

The phrase “needle in a haystack” that this song title was taken from makes it seem like the song may be quite simple. It has a cool, surface meaning for sure, but I think it operates on more that just that one level. The opening riff sets a really cool feel to the song right off the bat with its awesome reverb-y sound. Switchfoot is great at playing music that fits the lyrics and intentions of the song. This opening sends my thoughts out of myself and loosens the bonds that restricts my mind to thinking in terms of the physical world we occupy. The setting of the song as I see it is a man thinking about his life from a God’s-eye-view. Let’s unravel that a bit.

They open the song the way a couple of their songs open. “Hello, good morning, how ya do?”, “Welcome to the planet”, and in this song, “The world begins”. I actually understood this song better after coming across a version of this song that was old and not released (on the album). That version began with something like “Out of infinite time, out of infinite space, we are right now.” Combine this with the awesome, ambient style sounds rockin in the background and you get this immense view of all time and space. In this breathtaking view, a small speck is where “we are”. This verse alone makes me think about as much as most other songs.

            There are two main messages that this song manages to get through my occasionally thick skull. The first is that we really are insignificant dust particles with respect to all of space/time. While impossible for out dust particle minds to fully comprehend, I think it’s important to keep this in mind from time to time. It can be easy to get an inflated ego. So if you think about yourself as a needle in this haystack universe, pop goes the ego. The second message I get comes from the lines like “it’s no accident we’re here tonight, we are once in a lifetime”, and “become who you are, it happens once in a lifetime”. These lines scream to my ears (and hopefully yours) the idea that time is precious and we should spend it quite wisely. As a good friend of mine less eloquently put it, “LIKE HELLO, THOSE MOMENTS ARE GONE FOREVER, WE COULD HAVE USED THEM BETTER.” Time is mind boggling sometimes, especially when you consider the entire timeline of all existence, but the time we have shouldn’t be squandered.

            “Become who you are, it happens once in a lifetime”. Excellent line. This resonates with me because I try and focus on becoming who I am a lot. It may appear to be just a cool lyric that sounds all wisdom-y and whatever, but I believe I know what the writer means. The friend I quoted earlier is someone I met about a year ago. I have only known him for a year, and he has revealed to me a lot about myself just by him being himself. He really opened me up to what music is and what it could be. In all sorts of other ways I feel like he somehow inspired me to consider things about myself, and therefore learn about myself. This learning about yourself business doesn’t happen the same way every time, but it’s such a beautiful thing. I often wish I knew what my “purpose” was. I don’t believe God has a distinct mission for every single person, but I just want to know that I’m using my abilities for God in the best way that I can. I haven’t achieved this yet. I think we should all spare some energy to bettering ourselves by just being/becoming ourselves (our true selves). This has strayed a bit from what Jon may or may not have been thinking about while writing this, but this is still a blog.

            The overall them of this song (besides awesomeness) is that even when our time on earth is so insignificant, it really is significant. We could do so much with out time, or we could play video games 8 hours a day and pig out the other 2 hrs we spend awake. I really hope this song inspires all who hear it to take life seriously and to get up and flippin do something. This is a great song, and a great way to start off possibly their best album.