James Taylor - Shower the People

Show them the way that you feel...Revisiting an earworm from 2022.

I’ve been reflecting on love all week.

A friend of my wife’s and mine ended their life recently, and it’s made starkly clear how often we don’t know what the people we care about are struggling with.

Sometimes this is because we don’t ask.

I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my mother about 23 years ago. I was visiting my parents, a few months after the girlfriend I’d been with for two years broke up with me. I was telling my mom about how hard it had been for me, and asked her why she never checked in to ask how I was feeling after it had happened. “Oh, honey,” she said, “I didn’t want to pry. I figured if you wanted to talk about it, you would have.”

I have, and have almost always had, a great relationship with my mom. We’re a lot alike.

I, too, can easily avoid asking people — who I’m quite certain are hurting — how they are doing by using the “I don’t want to pry” card.

I convince myself that if I bring up the hard thing, then I’m making them suffer all over again. What if they don’t want to talk about it? I don’t consider that by offering to a friend an empathetic ear, I might help alleviate some of that suffering.

I have worked to break that “don’t want to pry” habit, which is really a fear of talking about the hard stuff, of saying the wrong thing. Pulling down the self-protective shield has deepened several friendships.

In a guided meditation I participated in recently, the teacher asked us a single question over and over, every 20-30 seconds: “What do you love?”

We were told to form a different answer each time and reflect on it until he asked again. He intentionally framed it as what instead of who. Though people are perfectly good answers.

I did not struggle to come up with new things to love. Music. Gardening. My wife. Baking banana bread. I could have gone on and on. I felt enormous gratitude that I wasn’t struggling to answer that question.

I couldn’t help but wonder, though, how my friend would have answered the question. If she was also raised in a family that “didn’t want to pry” when sensing that she was more withdrawn than usual. If something had led her to believe that not living would provide more of a refuge than anything life had to offer.

I know that if she was determined to end her life, she would have found a way to do it. I’m not spinning out over what I could have or should have done.

But it does bring to mind the message of the earworm I’d written about almost exactly a year ago.

James Taylor’s “Shower the People.”

Especially during the holiday season, when we are supposed to gather with friends and family and be merry and full of cheer, it’s important to remember that there are many people struggling with depression, anxiety and profound loneliness. People who might not have supportive family; and the friends they do have might be off with their own families.

I dedicate this re-post to them. May they be showered with love, and always have many answers to the question, what do you love.

Sorry if this intro is a bit of a downer — I can guarantee a more light-hearted approach in the below repost!🛀

showering - AI generated

Sometimes, my earworms are generated by whatever I am doing.

Yesterday, while in the shower, I began spontaneously singing:

If you were alive in the 1970s, you probably recognize this as the hit song “Shower the People” by James Taylor from his 1976 album In The Pocket.

I hadn’t heard the song in at least a decade, yet I immediately knew to use the long “E” sound on the word “the”— Shower thE people / show them thE way that you feel. As a kid, I remember finding Taylor’s pronunciation so formal and proper. People almost always used the short E sound, the “uh” ending of the word “the.” JT's choice of the long vowel may have been the way he spoke, but I think it was intentional.

Even my 9-year-old self could sense that using a long E in “the” gave the song’s advice more gravitas. This was neither the time nor the place for a short, casual e in “the.” This was important stuff. It was a heads-up to listen closely.

In other words: Tell your fucking loved ones that you love them. Or show them that you love them.

JT would probably not like my cursing interpretation, but that’s why it’s an interpretation, not a transcription.

Anyway, I’m showering and singing about showering the people you love with love, and I can’t help but notice my mind going in the wrong direction. My inner, immature 12-year-old is taking the advice literally. Interpreting it as JT suggesting we all shower together. Or at least with the people we love.

I’m somehow equating these lyrics:

Shower the people you love with love
Show them the way that you feel
Things are gonna work out fine if you only will
(Do as I say, yes)
Shower the people you love with love
Show them the way you feel
Things are gonna be much better if you only will

With these famous ones from the 1970 classic by Steven Stills (Crosby and Nash on backing vocals).

And there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love, honey
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with

I know that there is no connection between the songs other than being iconic decade-defining classics. And so I say to myself: Be mature, Steve.

This is a serious song about getting in touch with your emotions and expressing them now before it’s too late. It’s a message that’s as needed today as it was 45 years ago.

JT would never suggest that people love the one they are with if they can’t be with the one they love. Or would he?

Holy cow! Could my puerile, inner hormone monster be right? Could showering the people you love with love be one small step away from loving the one you’re with? And if you end up showering with this person, the person whom you just loved, and then tell them the way that you feel, would that be a good thing?

I’m guessing that might lead to a cold shower, for one. And then that person, the one who loved the one they were with and then told them the way that they felt, would be all confused. They might think: “I followed the advice given by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Taylor, and now I’ve cheated on my partner, expressed inappropriate feelings to a relative stranger, and have no one left to shower my love upon.”

So, I suppose the takeaway is this:

Keep your feelings to yourself and start taking more baths.

turkey in shower

Here’s something I’ve noticed about getting older.

I’m taking fewer showers.

I shave once a week at most, and usually only when my wife says, “I see you’re growing a beard.”

Maybe this reduction in grooming is only tangentially connected to age.

Maybe it’s more about being married and no longer needing to impress your partner: the seeking-a-mate dance is over.

Maybe it’s only tangentially connected to marriage.

Maybe it’s really about the pandemic.

When we all had to shelter in place, when a good percentage of us had to work from home, when we began ordering everything from food to toothpaste to soap (not that I needed much of that anymore) online for home delivery, it completely uprooted our ways of life. I don’t mean to make light of any of it — as a married middle-aged man with no kids, who was able to work from home, I felt grateful that I didn’t have an essential job, that I didn’t have to risk my life going to sell groceries or administer medicines.

Since March of 2020, I haven’t had to be around other people very often, so showering fell off the list of things I did in the morning while getting ready to commute from Oakland to San Francisco for work. Or before leaving the house to go anywhere. Now, with a dog-walking job, unless I’m meeting a new dog-parent client, it’s unlikely that I will smell worse than any of the pups I’m traipsing with around the neighborhood.

But maybe the reduction in showering — or how I prefer to describe it: my proactive stance to help slow the drought here in California — is because I’m not exercising the way I used to.

Prior to March of 2020, I would go to the gym 3-4 times a week. I’d take HIIT (High Impact Interval Training) aerobics classes, kickboxing, and spin classes. I’d play tennis at least once a week with my friend Mike or Andrew. I’d get super sweaty and end up showering almost every day.

I’ve tried online exercise classes, and that didn’t work for me. I even bought a spin bike, which is now used more for hanging clothes than riding. I rarely break a sweat, so showering as a post-exercise response is no longer happening.

I can imagine that one or two or twenty of you are now thinking: TMI.

And to that, I say:

You must be new to Earworms and Song Loops.

TMI is my middle name and my personal three-letter acronym. Too Many Ideas.

Clearly, I still shower, as it was taking a shower that started this whole thing. And as soon as I finish writing this, I’m going to shave. I was walking past a shopping center earlier today, and a homeless person nearby didn’t even bother asking me for change.

After this fateful showering incident, when the James Taylor tune filled my noggin, I decided to see if anyone had covered the song on YouTube. Uh, duh. Did I not learn anything from my Molly Hatchett post and the influx of “first listen” channels on YouTube?

There are at least a hundred different artists playing “Shower the People.” Some of whom I had heard of. Like the Dixie Chicks (before they became The Chicks).

And Glen Campbell:

And then I found this brilliantly cheesy version:

I spent about three hours listening to dozens of cover versions of “Shower the People” so that you don’t have to. That’s how generous I am—or disturbed. Or both.

After all that sonic showering, I came to a simple conclusion:

I still love the original the best.

So I’ll end with the man himself, showering the people with his open-hearted positivity in 2007, his voice as silky smooth and vibrant as ever.

• Do you need a cold shower after reading that?

• Do you have any slightly (or completely) corny but heartfelt songs that get you in the feels every time?

• And what is one thing you are thankful or grateful for? This question is not limited to U.S. readers.

As always, thanks for reading,

Steve