The Songs We Sing, Even in the Dark

There are moments when the world feels heavy in a way that can’t be fixed by explanations.

You can read the news.

You can argue facts.

You can scroll, doom, analyze, prepare.

And still, something in you aches — not for answers, but for reassurance that being human is still worth it.

That ache is older than politics. Older than nations. Older than any one disaster.

It’s the ache people have always felt when the night stretches long and the future feels uncertain.

And still — we sing.

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I’ve been noticing how humans invent reasons to gather.

Weddings. Birthday dinners. Backyard fires. Tiny art shows in small cafes.

Music nights. Kitchen tables. Someone bringing out a guitar when the conversation gets too quiet.

It’s easy to dismiss this as distraction. As fluff.

But I don’t think it is.

I think joy is rebellion.

Not loud joy. Not curated joy.

But the stubborn, unreasonable refusal to let the world flatten us into silence.

It’s saying:

You can take my certainties.

You can take my illusions.

But you don’t get my wonder.

You don’t get my laughter.

You don’t get my song.

Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

What he didn’t say — but understood — is that we are the ones who keep cracking things open.

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Long before playlists and concert halls, people sang while carrying unbearable weight.

Enslaved people sang in the fields — not because they were free, but because they refused to be erased.

Those songs held memory, coded hope, grief turned into rhythm.

They became the blues. Jazz. Rock. Hip hop.

So when a bassline rattles your ribs, it’s not entertainment alone — it’s an echo.

A lineage of people saying: I am still here.

Irish ballads spill out of Newfoundland pubs — songs of famine, exile, loss carried across oceans.

Eminem screamed his pain into a microphone so no kid would feel alone inside chaos.

Tracy Chapman whispered about revolution, because whispers can slip past guards that shouting can’t.

We don’t just sing when we’re happy.

We sing when we refuse to disappear.

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Lately, I’ve been holding onto smaller things.

The way my dog tilts his head at birds, as if the mystery of flight is brand new every time.

The sound snow makes — that dry crunch that only exists in deep cold.

The way Canadians drag patio chairs into March sunlight, wearing shorts beside snowbanks, daring spring to notice us.

None of this fixes the world.

But it keeps the heart supple enough to care.

And caring — real caring — is dangerous in a time that rewards numbness.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately.

About how easily it strips people of their humanity.

Label someone illegal.

Or vermin.

Or libtard.

Or MAGA clown.

Once a person becomes a label, cruelty feels justified.

Distance feels reasonable.

Bob Dylan asked, “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”

We’re still fumbling that answer. Still failing it, too often.

Which is why stories matter.

Why art matters.

Why music matters.

They pull us back toward recognition.

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There’s a story it makes me think of — fictional, but truer than many facts.

During the siege of Sarajevo, a cellist played Albinoni’s Adagio at the site where twenty-two people were killed by a mortar shell.

He played once a day, for twenty-two days.

Not because it would undo the violence.

Not because it would bring anyone back.

But because it said:

You can destroy buildings.

You can destroy bodies.

But you don’t get to destroy beauty.

That cellist — real or imagined — is the heartbeat beneath so much human history.

Every song sung in a prison.

Every poem written in exile.

Every painting made after loss.

It’s not denial.

It’s defiance.

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Some people turn pain into mission.

Elie Wiesel.

Viktor Frankl.

James Baldwin.

Maya Angelou.

Nelson Mandela — who invited his jailers to his inauguration.

They didn’t just survive.

They rose.

They turned their lives into lanterns — not to blind others, but to make the dark navigable.

Across cultures, the pattern repeats.

In Lebanon, families dance under the shadow of war.

In Portugal, strangers pour wine for strangers.

In South Africa, prisoners sang so guards couldn’t own their minds.

In Greece, neighbours cook for weeks after a death.

In Canada, we light fires in March.

We skate. We sing. We share food.

Different languages. Same song.

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I have only one tattoo.

Still I Rise.

Not because I’m fearless.

Not because I’m untouched by grief.

But because bitterness is a kind of death, and I refuse it.

Safety is an illusion.

Control is a myth.

Life is a snowflake moment — intricate, unrepeatable, already melting as we admire it.

So I choose to sing.

Not loudly.

Not perfectly.

But honestly.

To tell stories.

To protect what matters, even when it costs.

To dance on shards if that’s what the moment asks.

Especially in the dark.

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If you’re reading this near the end of the year, I hope you can feel this as an invitation, not a demand.

Find one song.

One poem.

One story.

One sound that reminds you you’re still human.

Maybe it’s someone’s laugh.

Maybe it’s your own breath, still rising.

Hold onto that.

It has always been enough to begin again.