My good friend Augie hosts a bi-weekly music jam here in New York. Ever since it first started about two years ago, I’ve had a strong, almost inevitable urge to get up on stage and sing Hey Jude. The desire is so persistent that I’ve caught myself rehearsing my performance multiple times.

However, every time I climb those three little steps to perform, I find myself unable to request anything other than my usual improv-rap session. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy cleverly coming up with rhymes for Madonia, Tong, Shapiro, Demarco, and Bello. But deep down, there’s nothing I’d love more than to finally sing Hey Jude and dedicate it to my friends, who are always up on that stage with me.

You see, Hey Jude isn’t just one of my all-time favorite songs (how unique of me, I know). It’s also the song that always seems to find me—whether I seek it out or not—during moments when life doesn’t feel quite right.

It played the first time I experienced the death of a close family member. It played when I almost dropped out of high school two months before graduation. I sang it under my sheets every time I had an argument with my family. It has played on the days when I feel I’ve screwed up badly. Even now, as I write this, it’s playing in the background because I’m struggling to put these thoughts into words.

Somehow, this song has become the soundtrack to my most defining moments. And because of that, I’ve convinced myself that performing it requires an equally mythical occasion—something grand, something profound. Ironically, this belief goes against the very essence of the song itself.

But maybe that’s the thing about meaning—it’s shaped by how we choose to see it. A friend of mine once said to me: You make of a flower whatever you want it to be. If you want it to be monumental, you place it in the most beautiful vase and let it be the centerpiece of your living room. If you want it to be insignificant, you throw it away, burn it, or simply forget to water it.

Problems are like flowers in that way. We all care for them in our own ways, and in the end, they always wither. I have my own flowers, but that doesn’t mean I should be selfish about others’—after all, not everyone has a south-facing window in New York. And what may seem ordinary to me might be someone else’s Mount Olympus, so I’d like to make sure Im always carrying spare “water” with me.

I can’t help but to think of the people I was never able to sing this song for, and I can only hope they find their Hey Jude moment—wherever they are, with whomever they are with. And unlike Hey Jude, perhaps this isn’t a matter of seeking an opportunity and “going to get her”. It doesn’t have to be. This song is special, and singing it for my friends will only add up to it, and given how unconditional our bonds are, I know they will deem it monumental on their own.

Note to reader & future me, my brain feels fried after this journey, I think I shouldn’t push myself to write this extensively everyday, I will consult with my advisor.