Denge: Please Do Not Disturb My Beautiful Disorder

There are songs about finding balance. Denge makes me think that perhaps balance is not something we find at all. Perhaps it is the small private arrangement we build inside ourselves and then spend half our lives protecting from other people.

I love the attitude of this song. It does not shout at the world. It does not try to win an argument. It almost smiles and says: all right, your red is red, your purple is purple, your truth may be true. I have no energy to fight you about it. Just do not come too close and reorganize my inner furniture.

That feeling becomes more familiar as I get older.

When I was younger, I thought every disagreement required an answer. If somebody misunderstood me, I wanted to explain. If someone had a ridiculous opinion, I wanted to correct it. If something was unfair, I wanted the universe to stop immediately so we could discuss the matter properly.

The universe, unfortunately, has never shown much interest in proper discussion.

Eventually you discover the luxury of saying: fine.

Not because the other person is right.

Because your afternoon is worth more than the argument.

There is enormous freedom in no longer needing to correct every person who has misunderstood you. Let them think what they think. Let them have their red and their purple. You have coffee getting cold somewhere.

What attracts me most in Denge is that its peace is not passive. The speaker has not surrendered. She simply knows there are battles too unimportant to deserve her disturbance.

That is a very different thing.

We often confuse strength with resistance. We imagine a strong person constantly defending boundaries, answering criticism, proving something, standing firmly against the world. But perhaps another kind of strength is knowing when not to move at all.

Someone throws a stone into your water.

You are not required to become the storm.

My Truth Can Change

One of the ideas in the song that I find almost shockingly healthy is the acceptance that love can change and even truth can change.

We are usually ashamed of changing our minds. We treat consistency as proof of character. If I believed something ten years ago, apparently I must continue carrying it forever or admit that the earlier version of me was foolish.

But why?

I hope some of my truths change.

If nothing I believe changes over thirty years, perhaps I have not been paying attention.

Love changes too. This is harder to accept because we like to describe real love as permanent. Yet human beings change, circumstances change, needs change. Sometimes love grows deeper. Sometimes it becomes friendship. Sometimes it becomes memory. Sometimes it disappears so quietly that nobody can identify the exact day it left.

This does not necessarily mean the earlier feeling was false.

A flower is not fake because it does not survive winter.

Maybe emotional maturity requires allowing things to be true for a period without demanding that they remain true forever.

The Secret Thing I Know

The most attractive idea in Denge may be the existence of a private knowledge that does not need to be explained to anyone.

I like this very much.

We live in an age of explanation. Everybody has a position, a biography, an opinion, a public version of happiness, and preferably a caption beneath it.

But some things become smaller when explained too much.

Why do I love a particular song?

Why do I feel comfortable with one person and exhausted by another?

Why does a particular street make me happy?

Sometimes I know.

Sometimes I simply know that I know.

That should be allowed.

Not every inner truth needs evidence.

There is something wonderfully peaceful about possessing a small piece of knowledge that belongs only to yourself.

It does not need applause.

It does not need agreement.

It does not even need to be completely rational.

The Art of Not Fighting

The image I keep from this song is someone sitting near a bright, moving sea and smiling at everybody with good intentions because fighting has become unnecessary.

I would like to become better at this.

Not indifferent. Not weak. Just selective.

There are people worth arguing with because the relationship matters. There are injustices worth resisting because silence would be cowardice. But then there are hundreds of small conflicts produced by ego, pride, misunderstanding, boredom, and the terrible human need to have the final sentence.

Winning these arguments rarely improves life.

Sometimes victory is walking away with your mood intact.

Perhaps this is what balance really means. Not reaching some perfect point where nothing disturbs us, but deciding what is allowed to disturb us.

That distinction changes everything.

The world will continue being noisy. People will continue having opinions about us. Love will change. Some of our truths will collapse. Streets will remain strange, trees will continue being trees, and somebody somewhere will certainly insist that we are living incorrectly.

Fine.

I increasingly understand the desire to smile politely and continue.

Because there are days when protecting your inner peace is more important than being understood.

There are people whose names you do not even need to learn before deciding they are not allowed inside your head.

And there are moments when the most intelligent thing you can say to the entire noisy world is very simple:

Believe whatever you like.

Just please do not disturb my balance.