In a hero’s journey, at some point near the climax, the very qualities and characteristics that we love about our protagonist tend to be the reasons for their downfall. Their loyalty to their family causes them to surrender and potentially risk the lives of countless others just to momentarily save their blood or chosen kin. Their fearlessness inspires them to absent-mindedly wander into a sacrificial lose-lose situation. Their ability to fly sends them soaring too close to the sun, and we all know how that story ends.

The same happens with us non-heroic regular folk. That meticulousness and attention to detail that allows you to carefully craft soundscapes with beautiful subtleties drives you into the tangling weeds as you bounce your 20th mix of the same song. The same planning and spreadsheet keeping that breeds efficiency due to data informed decisions slowly destroys the spontaneity of deleting a to-do list and heading to the ocean because you suddenly feel like breathing salty air.

Your purpose becomes your obsession.
Your peak becomes your valley.
Your strengths become your weakness.

Throughout our history on this earth, we’ve sought a more enlightened and advanced way of living, and in that quest we’ve achieved some technological marvels that would astound our ancestors. But along the way, we may have lost something worth more than what we gained.

These songs are an ode to the tipping of the seesaw as it totters over top the fulcrum. They’re simultaneously an appreciation for the comfort of our convenience and a requiem for our days of foraging for sustenance. They recognize that we’re cool as can be and insignificant in the grand scheme. They highlight our adventure in search of truth and the frightening result of being inundated with too much of that truth.

But the hero finds a way, or at least we keep watching or reading in hopes that they do, and we non-heroic regular folks deserve that same hope and grace as we accept that our strengths and weaknesses aren’t planets on opposite ends of the galaxy, but rather two sides of the same penny we hold onto for good luck.

So here’s to being human. Yeah, it gets hard all right, but that’s just part of the sequence.