Dragonfly Sign

A couple of days ago a song came up on the mp3 player as I commuted back home. It's called "Dragonfly on Bay Street" and it's by Ron Sexsmith - not a really well-known singer, I've found, so I'm giving you the words below in case you don't know it.

The narrator gets a "sign" - a dragonfly "in the heart of the business world." He pondered the sign, wondering "what was it telling me?" and then changes his job. Unfortunately, he doesn't like the new job, either, and he tells us that now "I spend my time keeping my eyes peeled for a sign that'll lead me home."

What makes this so remarkable a lyric to me is that in the bridge, as he's explaining how he pondered over the dragonfly, wondering "What was it telling me? It's better to be free?" and before he tells us how his new job makes him feel "so out of place", he briefly contemplates the notion that the answer to "What was it telling me?" was "Or maybe nothing at all..."

In other words, maybe the dragonfly wasn't a sign ... but something, sometime will be.

That's such an enormously human reaction. Instead of thinking "Well, that dragonfly wasn't a sign; maybe I should try thinking for myself instead of looking for signs and portents" the narrator just decides he picked the wrong thing to interpret as a sign. We do that all the time, don't we - we as a species, I mean. We pray and pray, and they don't get answered, but we don't think it's because there's no god; we just pray harder next time - and next. If we ever seem to find one, that's the one we remember (confirmation bias is rampant). And if we don't, well, we blame it on the devil, or false prophets with "lying signs and portents" and our own failure to discern the true god from the idol. So maybe we start church-shopping, looking for the right one. Or - as in Julia Sweeney's brilliant chronicle of her journey "Letting Go of God" - we may stop going to church but then we read horoscopes or I Ching or toss coins or something. We become Buddhists, or take up Kabbalah, or go pagan, or start calling Sylvia Browne or Alison Dubois. Often we just become some kind of nebulous "spiritual searcher".

It's apparently very hard for us to just stop looking for true signs and portents, no matter how hard it is to find them - how impossible, in fact. We keep looking for someone, or something, to help us make our decisions - or even make them, period. Someone or something to take the responsibility off our shoulders.

But if we're going to grow up we have to make our own decisions, don't we? Take responsibility for our own choices and decisions and actions. Even if someone or something is out there (which I don't believe for a minute), we aren't children. And we shouldn't want to be, shouldn't keep acting as though we were.

"What was it telling me? Maybe, nothing at all."

That doesn't seem to be the answer we want. But until we accept that that's the answer that is true. we'll keep on putting our lives into someone else's hands - someone who isn't, in fact, even there.

Used to work as a messenger
Spent my days riding elevators
In the heart of the business world
Till one day there came a sign
In the form of a
Dragonfly on Bay Street

Buzzin' round from tower to tower
At the twilight of the working hour
Had he taken a wrong turn?
Was he lost without a trace?
Just like us?
Dragonfly on Bay Street

In the crowd without a face
Dragonfly on Bay Street

No fields for miles around
As through the underground I go
What was it telling me?
It's better to be free?
Or maybe nothing at all...

Now I work in another field
Spend my time keeping my eyes peeled
For a sign that'll lead me home
Cause Lord I feel so out of place
Just like that
Dragonfly on Bay Street