Finding Everyday Joy In a Frozen World at Kmart
One afternoon a number of years ago, I finally got around to organizing my drum music. I had stuffed the sheets of notes, charts, and tablature wherever they’d fit, and the folders, notebooks, and three-ring binder that held them were fat and uncomfortable. I realized I needed a few more binders and sheet protectors to contain it all.
Honoring the procrastinator in me, I dropped what I was doing and drove into town, to Kmart. It was the only game in the rural coastal community I lived in at the time. Finding what you needed there was a bit chancey, but I didn’t want to take the 30-minute drive to the next town (population 26,000) down the coast to get my supplies. And while I realized I was procrastinating, I didn’t want to procrastinate that much that particular day.
It was after three o’clock, a school day, and the place was packed with parents and their elementary school-aged kids who, for whatever reason, all decided Kmart was the place to be that day after school.
Every kid in the entire town must have been there.
All at the same time.
I wondered if I had made a mistake in coming, but something told me to stay, to get what I needed and then navigate my way through the crowd and then home to continue my organizing task.
Overhead, in-store music played classic rock.
Yeah baby! It sounded gooooood! This shopping experience was getting better.
It was slow going, making my way to the office supplies department in the far back corner of the store, dodging carts and people, taking detours to circumvent clogged aisles, and every aisle was clogged. I found the binders and sheet protectors (both were in stock AND on sale!) and made my way
back through the store, avoiding moms and dads pushing red shopping carts full of towels, pillows, clothes, food, toiletries, what have you, while their children hopped, skipped, and danced in tight orbits around the carts. Little girls practiced their classical ballet steps and gestures, diminutive energetic moons circling the mother ship.
The awesome background music played on, above the high mood of adult voices and the sweet aura of young enthusiasm. This wasn’t a discount retail store, it was a dance party.
The lines at the cash registers were uncharacteristically long and slow. Nevertheless, the mood of the shoppers and the employees was holiday-esque, festive even. Smiles, laughter, and the giggles of children punctuated the carefree conversations of the adults.
Queen finishes Crazy Little Thing Called Love, and another song begins.
A distant unsettling wind, piano notes — high, tinkling — the draw of a bow on strings. The mood softens, becomes pensive, as the song begins:
The snow glows white on the mountain tonight
Not a footprint to be seen
A kingdom of isolation
And it looks like I’m the queenThe wind is howling
Like this swirling storm inside
Couldn’t keep it in
Heaven knows I tried
Yes, it’s Let It Go, from Frozen, the 2013 Disney film that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Let It Go was awarded the Oscar for Best Original Song. Go ahead, sing along if you wish, but hold up for a few bars as we go back into the store…
The already joyful mood in the store is approaching epic proportions, so I decide to get into the song, surrendering to it occupying my head the rest of the day. For now, though, I’ll let this be just as it is and see where it goes as the Snow Queen Elsa continues her lament:
Don’t let them in, don’t let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal, don’t feel
Don’t let them know
Well, now they knowLet it go, let it go
Can’t hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door
You’re singing along, aren’t you? It’s okay, probably better if you do.
Next enters the piano, the swell of strings and emotion:
I don’t care what they’re going to say
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway
Everyone in the store hums along, a few adults continue their chatting, some children hop around and dance while a confident Elsa, comfortable in her skin, continues her song.
It’s funny how some distance
Makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me
Can’t get to me at all
It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I’m free!Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You’ll never see me cry
Here I stand and here I’ll stay
Let the storm rage on
Although the checkout lines move forward imperceptibly while the lines get longer, everyone is still jovial. Long lines don’t matter. Cheerful voices and delighted laughter pervade. As the musical bridge continues, I marinate in the scene around me. Not quite part of it, not quite apart from it, observing with physical and inner eyes, letting it lift me.
My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I’m never going back
The past is in the past
Here comes the soaring final chorus, and the volume of the humming voices at the checkout lanes increases to match.
Let it go! Let it go!
And I’ll rise like the break of dawn
Let it go! Let it go!
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand in the light of day
Let the storm rage on!
The music recedes, bowing to the final line of the song. But it isn’t Elsa I hear articulating that line. In the silence between Let the storm rage on! and the last line — tucked unremarkably between the notes — is a knowing that something extraordinary is about to happen.
I felt it, as surely as I sensed the rhythm of my own heart and the whisper of my breath, the impulse of this miraculous life.
All else in the store becomes silent, as if the gods had just now cued the innocents into being.
The beep beeping of sales registers hush, the adult conversation ceases, fussy babies quiet.
Even the silence goes silent to make way for what’s about to happen.
And this, dear friends, is what happens:
The children in the store — the kids at the checkouts and the kids sprinkled throughout the building — all together in sacred synchronization, rise as one voice, drowning out Queen Elsa. In a chorus of purity and sincerity with the exuberance, energy, and power that creates worlds, the children sing their solo, their truth, the last line of the song:
The cold never bothered me anyway
The giant ice doors thud closed, and it’s over. The song is done.
Inside Kmart, a momentary silence pierces reality. The adults had retreated and knew to let the children carry the last line, but now all the chatter and activity resumes.
The beginning of a new story begins to form in my head. Unencumbered by the need to take care of my own children or return to the bustling world of a retail environment, my spirit is free to process and consider the heights of what had just happened.
My chakras whir and spin and weave the threads of the children’s sweet innocence into a metaphysical tapestry supported by the willingness of the adults to let the children be, to ride the children’s spontaneity and enthusiasm to what is most certainly a less frequently traveled path to joy.
This is the type of joy we could have every day if only we were willing to live in the moment, in the now, if we knew how to get there. This is the path — to let it be, let it go, to let life unfold, to let it happen.
Can you feel the delight in living? The energy of exuberance? The spirit of elation and bliss and ecstasy? The pleasure in not knowing what will happen next? Can you feel it in the cells of your arms and legs, heart and lungs and in your gut? The everyday joy hidden, frozen, in front of our faces? This is how we’re meant to live. Can you feel it? Can you?
Now it’s my turn at the register. I take a deep breath and approach the cashier. A dreamy me, a shaken and tranced-out me swipes my credit card, picks up my new binders and sheet protectors, walks to the car, gets in, the song taking over my mental landscape.
Tears of everyday joy roll down my face as I make my way home.
I’m weeping still.
Go ahead, I know you want to sing it. Click or tap on it and let it go. Follow the bouncing snowflake.
What do you think? Did you like this? Then me know by joining in on the applause.
