The song that resides most comfortably in my daily internal soundtrack is, "Hard Believer" by First Aid Kit. I'm outing myself here as being non-religious, which is certainly an unpopular thing in the popular media this election season (though increasingly common and open in modern society, strangely). The melody of the song is simple, the accompaniment sparse (solo guitar and a bit of piano). The words, though, grab at me almost as well as the amazing "Defying Gravity".
Hard Believer's final, building refrain is, "There is one life, and it's this life, and it's beautiful."
That resonates for me in a way that few lyrics do. It questions and affirms and validates my core beliefs in one fell swoop. It illustrates what I struggle to explain to overtly religious friends - that I don't have sadness in my life from a lack of belief in a supernatural god. Rather, I have a strong and terrible sense of amazement and wonder at the natural world, and an earnest purpose in having this one incredible chance to do right by it.
aphorism - a concise statement of a principle
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