Is My Song True? An Ember Campfire Reflection

I was sitting around a campfire recently when a group of travelers were asked a simple question: 

“What would your walk-in song be?” 

You know the kind. 

The song that plays when you enter the room. 

The song that tells a little bit of your story before you ever say a word. 

The answers were wonderful. 

Some travelers chose powerful songs. 

Some chose funny songs. 

Some chose songs that made everyone smile. 

And for a moment, I noticed something familiar. 

Comparison. 

Not the loud kind. 

The quiet kind. 

The kind that whispers: 

“That’s a better choice.” 

“That’s cooler.” 

“That’s more impressive.” 

The kind that asks us to hold our story beside someone else’s and measure the difference. 

I’ve noticed this happens more often than we realize. 

Someone shares an accomplishment. 

Someone tells a story. 

Someone displays confidence. 

Someone enters the room with a little more swagger than we possess. 

And suddenly we stop looking at our own road. 

We start looking at theirs. 

The strange thing is that comparison usually asks the wrong question. 

It asks: 

“Is my song as good as theirs?” 

But perhaps a better question is: 

“Is my song true?” 

One traveler chose Carry On Wayward Son. 

Not because it was the coolest song in the room. 

Not because it would impress anyone. 

Because it reflected the road he had actually walked. 

The losses. 

The victories. 

The reinventions. 

The chapters that nearly broke him. 

The chapters that strengthened him. 

The simple fact that he was still walking. 

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that authenticity possesses a kind of power comparison can never provide. 

A song does not need to be cooler than someone else’s song. 

A story does not need to be bigger than someone else’s story. 

A road does not need to be harder than someone else’s road. 

It only needs to be yours. 

The older I get, the less interested I become in choosing the song that impresses people. 

And the more interested I become in choosing the song that tells the truth. 

Perhaps that is one of the gifts of becoming a traveler. 

Learning to appreciate your own road. 

Not because it is better than anyone else’s. 

Because it is yours. 

And that is enough. 

— Ember