Kokomo —
It’s the kind of lyrics that wreck your heart and warm your heart all at the same time. The melody happily whistles well wishes while the fingertips of yearning for yesteryear slip over each note. It’s the kind of song that sounds like the simplicity of childhood and feels like the rare chance of finding and living a childhood-type happiness — even if the years between now and the date on your birth certificate say you’re an adult.
As I celebrate 27 years on this earth today, Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers” sings a serenade unlike any other; a song that, from my perspective, tells a story about the heart strings of a person pulled in the direction he sees the next generation going: forward.
Forward, in my experience, has been a relative term. For years, I thought if I kept moving forward — blinders on each side — to point X, happiness would be there. X was anything from a certain job, a degree or a destination. Sometimes X would happen, sometimes it wouldn’t and sometimes X would happen and it wasn’t what I thought it would be. So, I’d slide my mind back into my blinders and move “forward.”
It wasn’t until I realized happiness wasn’t marked by a destination and joy wasn’t identified by a job title printed on a business card that I understood its meaning; happiness was actually in the journey to finding my way to any destination, even if it was just dead ends or coasting down Disappointment Lane. To wait and to hold on for happiness, is to miss out on the best parts of it. The search is the part your soul can learn from, the hunt for happiness provides the stops and starts of wrong turns, right turns and meet cues with people who change your world, even if it’s with just a second-long, yet sincere smile. It’s that message penned by Petty in “Wildflowers" that my 27 years identify with.
“Run away, let your heart be your guide
You deserve the deepest of cover
You belong in that home by and by.”
No matter where your return address is, no matter where you take cover from the storm. If your heart is leading the way, you’ll find it; but, only after you take the blinders off and be among the wildflowers, where you belong.
[friday] editor/Started the search in ‘86
[friday]
Related Photos
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Lindsay Eckert
Discussion
You belong among the wildflowers
- [friday]
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Facebooks threads into more than I expected
“Lindsay, what’s on your mind?”
I immediately thought, “I’d have to be pretty self-centered to think my ‘Facebook friends’ would care about such an answer.” So, the section stayed blank on my profile for far longer than most. -
Kokomo Speedway
After 18 interviews, copious note-taking, endless discussions and picture browsing for a story about something bigger than its parts — i.e. Kokomo Speedway — is nearly finished. To be honest, I’d never been to Kokomo Speedway until last year. I grew up watching the Indy 500 and picking a name from a hat, but my racing knowledge ended there. But, when you fall in love with someone who fell in love with Kokomo Speedway — most likely when he was still in the womb as his mom watched his dad race — your knowledge increases, exponentially.
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Earth Day: Experience it every day
“No litterers allowed,” stated the sign I drew up with peace signs and flowers with extra power that adorned my bedroom door as a kid. Growing up, I was a litter patrol lady. Toss a banana out the window? You were going to face the wrath of a 6-year-old. Leave a soda can at the park? Oh my, a mistake you don’t want to make. My cousins would purposely provoke such opportunities for nothing more than to get the entertaining spiel of keeping the Earth safe from a 6-year-old. I encouraged institutionalizing recycling in our household and double-checked trash cans to make sure recycling objects didn’t make their way into the wrong places.
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The Waving Girl
She was born on land, but her soul was given life from her love of the sea and the lives it carried. Her journey started simply and ended sentimentally. During the in-between, she was the symbol of home to the hearts of maritime travelers: At night, she was the illumination of guidance. At morn, she was the breeze the sea gently exhaled. For 44 years, she was ingrained with the Savannah River’s sand — just as she was ingrained in the minds who witnessed her waving handkerchief interrupt a sun ray’s storyline. S
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Never too late for April Fool’s Day
This will be my last column for the [friday] section, as Kokomantis has been promoted from corner-side spectator to Lifestyle Editor ... Just kidding, late April Fool’s Day joke! I look forward to writing my column every week just like I look forward to my favorite “holiday” every year. For 364 days, I plan pranks of all varieties for my beloved day that’s dedicated to flipping my family and friends out.
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The Egg Battle of 1990
Easter may be a time of sugary sweet Peeps and darting for hard-boiled eggs dressed in their Easter Sunday best. For me, it’s been about that and getting back to my roots. Growing up, my family and I nestled into my Pap’s motor home and headed for the mountains of West Virginia – our annual Easter Sunday home for my entire childhood.
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Bracket Madness
As a Hoosier, it’s hard to believe Wednesday night marked my first bracket-building experience. Despite my love for sports, I never got into brackets. I’m a one-team-at-a-time gal so in the fall it’s the Colts; in the winter it’s the Hoosiers; and in the spring and summer I go to baseball games for the people watching and soft pretzels. So, I never learned the pros and cons of other teams and what makes them worthy of winning in a bracket.
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Reality is only as deep as our passions
When I was in seventh grade the “Real World” was a reality show I was forbidden to watch. The behaviors flaunted were borderline unfit for TV, let alone a 12-year-old’s eyes. However, that’s what older cousins were for, I suppose, because my remote somehow found its way to MTV a time or two and lessons in how to not live your life ensued. But, today Howard County 7th graders are getting a multifaceted look into life in the “Real World” — and not the kind that encompasses Jell-O wrestling and TV-censored bleeps interrupting 80 percent of a sentence.
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You belong among the wildflowers
It’s the kind of lyrics that wreck your heart and warm your heart all at the same time. The melody happily whistles well wishes while the fingertips of yearning for yesteryear slip over each note. It’s the kind of song that sounds like the simplicity of childhood and feels like the rare chance of finding and living a childhood-type happiness — even if the years between now and the date on your birth certificate say you’re an adult.
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Save IU School of Journalism
As the doors swing to a close, the pens held at the hands of journalists aren’t writing, the recorders aren’t rolling and the cameras aren’t capturing. The envelope of Indiana University School of Journalism’s future is unfolding, but the details are sealed tightly by Lauren Robel, Indiana University Provost, who recommended the school merge with Indiana University’s College of Arts and Sciences (COAS) last week — expelling the journalistic institution from its Ernie Pyle Hall home and potentially downgrading the nationally-ranked school to a program within the bigger-is-better school of thought.
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