“Welcome to the Hotel California, a lovely place.” I want to know how many times in life you have read the lyrics to a song? How many times when you read those lyrics or listened to the song did you get hung up on what the author or writer of the song was trying to say?
If you have been to this blog before, you may know my story. I grew up in a Christian home, attended Baptist and other Protestant churches most of my life. Songs like “Hotel California” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” were highly protested in churches that I attended.
I recall a one-day seminar that was held in the Christian school where I attended 10th grade. The man who led that day taught us all the satanic worship behind music and songs like this. I recall this man giving us proof of satanic meaning behind the bands, the songs and the albums they came from.
In watching the movie on the history of the Eagles this past weekend, they mentioned the very things I heard growing up. Don Henley also said when they wrote music, they just put the lyrics and songs out and somehow we as people have developed that songs’ meaning to us.
I know we all want to hear that these preachers are right, after all they were teaching us kids. No preacher wants to brainwash some child with a lie, right?
As an adult I have learned far more about life and deception than I ever knew as a kid. I have learned that some things I was taught were from a base of fear. These were people who didn’t understand a meaning or found something to back the meaning they wanted the song to have and then preached how that meaning was fact. Think it stopped there?
About ten years ago now I attended a Bible study were the goal of the teacher of this class was to get you to discover what you really believed about a subject. He then took scripture passages that proved his point, a point that was taught the very opposite in almost every church in America.
Currently in America as well as around the world, people are talking conspiracy on so many things, from governments, to churches, to leaders. They are building a spirit of fear inside of us. People are jumping on board with these peoples’ teachings with the same types of supposed proof as this song from the Eagles.
What are you building in your world today, tomorrow? Are you building a world of a fear-driven life for others to see? Many things in our world can be “proven” right or “proven” wrong. We have to research the facts, or dismiss them. We need more people building a world not taking it apart.
If you are creating a business or a life around your career, it helps to create controversy to build attention, but build it on facts; build a world that solves real problems. Build dreams that bring joy to peoples’ lives. I personally love the song, “Hotel California.” I believe it tells the story of how we create and trap our lives in places we never intended to stay. We live by the choices we make. What choices will you make to change your world?
I’m Tim Gillette, the Rocker Life Coach. It’s time to live your dream, to love what you do and those you share life with. Are you ready to change the world and make your 2013 rock?
