Underneath It All: When a Song Lyric Forces You to Listen
This morning, I woke up with a single song lyric playing on a loop in the back of my mind: Underneath it all.
Initially, my logical mind wanted to connect the original song meaning to something happening in my life, yet I have learned that it’s not the original way it was created that was key – it’s often the words and where these are directing one to look at life, work, or relationships. We often look for the first layer – what does it represent on the surface. However, that is only one small aspect of the entire “iceberg” or mountain is the part we see.
Sometimes the repetitive thoughts, the random track playing in our heads, or the sudden flashes of memory are asking us to get curious and look at it from a different perspective – through a new lens or to go even deeper beyond the way the original artist understood the words or song’s meaning to what these connect for you.
So, I took that lyric out onto the desert trails for my morning hike.
As I walked, the medicine of the desert provided an immediate mirror. A beautiful white doodle came bounding up and immediately sat down, pressing her paws to my feet with a subtle smile before melting into a completely relaxed posture. Her guardian remarked, "Wow, normally she just wants to roll over and show her belly." A second dog approached from a polite, quiet distance, sniffed, and went on her way.
Right there on the trail, the lyric clicked. Underneath it all.
Those two dogs weren't behaving badly or well; they were operating from two completely unique nervous systems. The first chose immediate grounded closeness; the second required polite space. Neither was wrong. They were simply communicating their authentic truth from the inside out.
That is the exact shift I have been anchoring into my practice over the last few months. I recognize that specific roles have existed beneath the surface behaviors and actions of the way I have worked, engaged, and built relationships with the animals. When an animal companion is hypervigilant, anxious, or refusing to eat, they aren't failing a training test. Underneath it all, their nervous system is processing trauma, grief, or a major life threshold, and they are desperately searching for felt safety.
As I finished my hike, a flock of pigeons and doves suddenly scattered from the path ahead of me, taking flight into the Arizona sky. It felt like a sacred confirmation: as we choose to step forward into our absolute, authentic truth and look past surface-level symptoms, the heavy, outdated patterns of the past naturally disperse to clear the way.
The next time a random word, a lyric, or an animal encounter grasps your attention, step into it from the lens of a cat or dog sniffing and exploring something new. Listen to the big picture. There is always a deeper language waiting to be decoded—right underneath it all.
