31 Days of Music - Smashing Pumpkins

Anthem. That’s the word which springs to mind when this song appears on my car radio. The song had been out for some time but its link to me had only ever been tenuous. For some reason, as influential as this band is, I’ve never been a huge fan, yet this song does come out once a year for a look around. Its my spring-time groundhogs day tune.

I specifically remember driving around in my 1965 Ford Mustang, sometime in either the spring of 93 or 94, with this song blasting out of the speakers. Wherever I was, it was slightly wooded and probably in the evening as the sun was filtering through the trees lining the roadside, giving a warm, golden glow that is normally found only in the movies.

The details of what I had been doing that day are lost to time, but the feeling of that day lingers on. It really had been a great day and here I was, not a care in the world, driving a car I loved on a winding country lane with a song blaring out that today is the greatest day. Fitting.

Was it really the greatest day? Possibly, at least up until that point in my young and (very inexperienced) life. Looking back, I can feel those emotions as a distant but very recognizable echo and in a very simplistic way, I was right. Yet with more history behind me now, I can see that there have been days that have been greater, if more nuanced, in the time since then.

But my love for this song has declined as it has inevitably been tied in my mind with that simplicity of life when I first heard the tune. In a way, I think this is a great anthem for youth but not a great anthem for life. I see people who are always referencing how great their youth was and how those are always the better days and wonder to myself, why do you even bother with life if you only think your best days are far in your past?

Today will not always be the greatest day, but tomorrow definitely could be. Its all up to us in how we choose to live.