Last year, during my music voyages and explorations, I bumped into the soul-penetrating music of Mereba. As her enchanting voice flowed straight into my psyche, singing of life, love, pride and her deep insights, I decided I simply had to listen to more of her album, The Jungle Is The Only Way Out.
That title has compelled me since the moment I saw it and I am still unpacking what it is means, every day. But, as Mereba shared her stories with me that night, I realized how many jungles I’ve been avoiding in my life. To me, the jungle is a symbol for the emotional world.
So the truth holds. There are jungles everyone’s too scared, too tired, too busy, to enter into. And, if only life was a polite companion, then we could stay on the periphery of these soul-forests. But, with rudeness akin to ignorance, life corners us until our backs are right up against the tree trunk we had formerly glanced away from with feigned politeness, thinking how annoying its likeness was. Suddenly, we stand face to face with the inevitable, the unavoidable.
Here, we have two choices: to actively engage, step into the jungle, and travel until we’ve found a way out; or we can disengage, step into the jungle, continuing to pretend we can’t see the thicket around us. A lot of us have already been forced into the thick of things, but in stubbornness, or maybe in terror, we pretend we aren’t surrounded by the things we need to grow out of, process, embrace and accept. The underbrush, the sound of living things, ferns taller than grown men, jungle surrounds us. It waits for us.
As I think about all I’m going to walk through this year, this decade, this life, fear and excitement fill me. Though the fear continues to die the more I discover that there’s nothing about these emotions that is too big for me to work through. I’m only filled with a sense of adventure, of love, of hope. And the great need to see Mereba live in concert.
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