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Ten Percent
By Bebo Norman
June 12, 2002
"Isn't singleness sort of your platform?"
I think three or four different people have posed this sort of question to me in the last three or four days … enough to make me question the question, at least. And being the insecure being that I am, I managed to turn the question into some sort of an offhanded insult and to take offense. "So are you saying that if I were to get married suddenly that my 'platform' would collapse and my career in music suddenly would be over?" Based on the questions I answer, there are times I'm tempted to think it would.
The point is that the questioners and the questionee (me) once again have placed all this emphasis on the singleness aspect of the music I play rather than on the music itself, the faith at the very core of it, or the living that it's all wrapped up in. And I just keep wondering why it always comes back to that one thing.
Now I do understand that I've written quite a few songs that wrestle with singleness and the fears that being single can evoke. But with my best mathematical skills I figure that of all the songs I've written in my life, probably only 10 percent of them have been about or even related to the subject of singleness. And that's probably a pretty fair comparison to the amount of time, in my regular daily life, I think about singleness or the issues surrounding it.
The truth is that 90 percent of the time I'm absolutely content — maybe even stubbornly so — with being single. So why then, if only 10 percent of my songs are about singleness and only 10 percent of my time is dedicated to being concerned about singleness, do 90 percent of the questions I field in interviews deal with the subject? And even more so, why am I so compulsively defensive about it?
The reality is that that 10 percent is a pretty heavy 10 percent. It's supersaturated. It's a 10 percent that's fat with loneliness and ripe with fear. And even if it only hits us 10 percent of the time, when it does hit, it hits hard. And you know what? I share these sad days and these fears — however frequent or infrequent they may be — with a great number of people. And they're not just single people. Loneliness is really the issue here, and loneliness doesn't discriminate. It bites every soul created with that God-shaped vacuum inside. It's common ground, really. For believers and unbelievers alike. Because we all know, whether we admit it or not, that regardless of how beautiful and full the relationships in our life may be, there's something else we long for. Something even more beautiful. Something even more full.
I spoke with a married woman after a show a few nights ago, and she told me that for her, the percentages were reversed. She said that 90 percent of the time she wakes up in the morning and thanks God for her beautiful children and for a husband who she's more in love with today than the day they were married. But she said half joking (and I think any mother would admit this) that there are days, about 10 percent of them, when she wouldn't mind being able to just get away from it all, when she wouldn't mind so much being single.
If we were really honest, we'd all admit that regardless of how good life is, regardless of who we live it with or without, and regardless of what we believe or how "well" we believe it, there's still a 10 percent that pulls at our soul in an ache for something more. I thank God for that 10 percent. I thank God for the weight of it. I thank God because it's that 10 percent that reminds us that fullness is never completely full until the day we see God face to face. In the end, I think that's why everyone asks about singleness. And that's a platform I'll gladly stand on.
Blessings!
Bebo Norman
Check out Bebo's Web site at www.bebonorman.com.
Bebo welcomes your feedback and brainstorms at:
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