Living

Baba C introduced me to a song this week called “Make It Spectacular.”

Sometimes a song arrives at exactly the right moment. You hear it and something inside you says, yes.

Not because the song is necessarily telling you something you didn’t already know, but because it puts words to something you’ve been feeling.

That’s what happened to me with this one.
The message is simple.
Don’t wait.
Don’t wait for the perfect moment.
Don’t wait until everything is figured out.
Don’t wait for someday.

Because someday has a funny way of staying just out of reach.

We spend so much of our lives thinking about what we’ll do “one day.” One day I’ll travel. One day I’ll start that project. One day I’ll spend more time with my family. One day I’ll take better care of myself. One day I’ll finally do the thing I’ve always wanted to do.

I’ve certainly done my share of waiting.

And then life reminded me that time doesn’t wait with us.

Burnout was one of those reminders.

For years, I thought I had plenty of time to figure things out later. Work hard now. Deal with life later. Take the trip later. Rediscover myself later.

Then eventually, later became now.

And perhaps that’s why this song resonates with me so much.

Over the past few years, I’ve started saying yes to things I might once have postponed.

I travelled.
I walked away from a career that had consumed me.
I rediscovered creativity.
I became the Bubble Maestro.
I wrote a Fringe show.
I stood on a stage and told my story.

None of those things were part of some perfectly calculated five-year plan. They happened because at some point I stopped waiting for everything to be ready.

I’ve also learned that “spectacular” doesn’t necessarily mean doing something extraordinary. Sometimes spectacular is sitting with someone you love and having a great conversation. Watching your niece and nephew laugh. Babysitting two little kids who remind you how to laugh again. Taking your mother somewhere she needs to go. Watching fireworks and appreciating every colour in the sky. Blowing bubbles and watching a stranger smile.

A spectacular life isn’t necessarily a life that looks spectacular from the outside. Maybe it’s a life that feels spectacular from the inside. That’s the part of the song that really stayed with me.

We don’t get to keep our years.
We only get to spend them.
And every day, whether we realize it or not, we’re spending a little more of what we have.

So what are we spending it on?
What are we postponing?
What are we afraid to try?
Who are we waiting to become before we allow ourselves to really live?

I don’t know how many years I have left. None of us do.

But I know this much now:
I don’t want to spend whatever time I have left waiting for the perfect moment.

I want to make the ordinary moments count.
I want to say yes more often.
I want to laugh harder.
Love more openly.
Travel when I can.
Create when inspiration arrives.
Show up for the people who matter.
And when the opportunity comes to do something that scares me a little…
maybe I’ll say yes before I have all the answers.

Because perhaps the goal isn’t to make every moment spectacular.

Perhaps it’s simply to stop waiting for life to become spectacular before we decide to live it.

Thank you, Baba C, for introducing me to this song.

I think I needed to hear it.

P.S. There’s one more interesting thing about this song: it’s an AI-generated song. And perhaps that’s what makes this whole experience even more interesting to me. We don’t always have to know where something came from to appreciate what it makes us feel.

And maybe that’s another reason to make it spectacular.