And as promised, the lengthy explanation of the fan favorite song called Earthbound Angel from our debut album. So how do i go about this? Hmm... Honestly I always feel daunted everytime I am asked to explain what this song means. Why? simply because Earthbound Angel is my most personal song from all the songs that I have written. And it does not help that it became magnified when it began to catch the listeners attention. Most people who were able to listen to our album always pick Earthbound Angel as the song that caught their attention. So here I am today to give an explanation about the story behind the song... and what it means. The lyrics is posted below, my explanation will come next.
EARTHBOUND ANGEL
I gazed at the clear blue sky
Hoping somehow i could fly
Yet i'm just an earthbound angel
With no wings, no halo or robes
I resigned my self from flying
Leaving this world behind
I could choose to soar above the skies
And be one with the flight of angels
But I am here in this world for one purpose
To be with you and be your guide
To serve, to love, and to care
To be with you and be your guide
And be your earthbound angel
I need not leave you and fly
Cause the skies aren't mine
I belong here as an earthbound angel
To inspire, to guide, and share
If I just don't give up on trying
To leave this world behind
Earthbound Angel is my personal belief about love. I wrote this song a few years back during the times when I had doubts about love. When I was on the verge of trying not to believe in love again because of the many times that it had failed me. But then I have always had a strong faith in God. And as we all know, GOD is LOVE. So it would really be preposterous for me to believe in God, yet I don't want to believe in love. So I gave myself a little introspection and started writing my thoughts as well as what my heart was trying to understand at that time.
"I gazed at the clear blue sky..."
I wanted to escape and refuse to believe in love. I turned skeptical and shut down my heart from experiencing love. I refused to let anyone in. But deep inside, there is still this longing to find love and feel love. I have always believed that in order for one to be able to live a successful life, one should be able to share his love to another significant person. And for this love to multiply, one should be able to raise a very good family. This has always been my view about life. But then when you have been betrayed by love, somehow you would want to hold back from loving again because you fear of the pain that you would suffer if the love wouldn't work. You want to escape from that feeling and not want to come back... you hurt because you loved sincerely, and because you love sincerely, you are in pain because you lost that person whom you would want to spend your whole lifetime with, and most especially, you are in pain because you could never hate the person. All you ever wanted was to give the other person the one true love that you thought was what the other has been looking for.
So then breeds skepticism...
It is unfortunate to know that a lot of people nowadays seems to treat love in a less serious way. And because of this, the real meaning of LOVE is compromised. Love is being abused. Used for the wrong reasons. Spoken without heart. Love has been stained so much by false ideas that people would no longer seem to care or believe about it's sacredness. People have been fooled by Romantic Love, deeming it as just a passing of feelings and emotions and that when the feeling dies down, so too the relationship ends. In fact I could personally say, Romantic Love can be selfish. Why? because romance is always only about the feelings that you receive from the other. And when romance dies down, the relationship would start breaking down when one doesn't understand the core idea of what true love means...
Romance is just a part and parcel of the whole idea of love. It is not necessarily a bad thing. But relationships based only on romance can be self-serving. So what is true love? I personally wouldn't want to call it true love. I personally would want to call it Christian Love. The core of finding the real meaning of True Love can only be found in the values of Christian Love. As the lines of the chorus of the song says "To be with you and be your guide, to serve, to love, and to care..." Being a devout Christian, my ideas about love has always been grounded from the values of Christian Love...
"To serve, to love, and to care"
Service is a selfless act of giving one's self to the other. For one to be able to show what true love means, one must know how to be a servant. What other better example can you show to the other person that you love them than to be their servant? We put our significant others beyond ourself and make them the most important person in our life... to the point that we would be willing to sacrifice our life for theirs. If we say that we love another, that we care for the other, we always put in our hearts and in our minds that their welfare and well-being should come first. I wrote those three in the proper order that I would want to put them. Because for me, service comes first above all, we cannot love if we cannot serve. and we cannot care if we don't know how to serve and love the other.
"To inspire"
We are an inspiration to the other. If we love right, we can inspire others to believe in love and help spread that love. Common folks are afraid to be put inside a microscope under the scrutiny of possible criticisms about their self. Some wouldn't want to be called a role model because of the heavy responsibility and pressure that would come from it. But when we love, we should also seek to inspire. Because our lifetime that would be spent with our significant other should be filled with inspiration not only for the both of you, but also for the family that would come along from the both of you. We build love not only for ourself but also for the next generation to see, to learn from, and for them to share.
"To guide"
True love would also mean that we are willing to guide our partner in the life that we would be sharing. The key word there is guide if you may not have noticed. Not teach, nor lead. Why guide? because to guide would mean that we are walking that step WITH him/her. To teach would mean that there is some form of dominancy because one is more knowledgeable than the other. And to lead would also mean that there is a form of dominancy because you are leading instead of walking with him/her. I found guidance to be a key ingredient in order for relationships to work. Because i have always firmly believed that nobody is perfect. But that does not mean that we are going to use it as an excuse for us not to strive harder in our relationship. There is no such thing as a perfect relationship. But with the guidance from both parties, whatever wrongs that would be encountered, whatever failures that would be experienced, and whatever challenges that would be faced, one is assured that they are not in it alone. There is someone there to guide you amidst the storms.
"To share"
I believe that the one last thing that would really make us understand how true love works is the act of sharing. When we love, we open up our hearts to another person because we want to share our heart to him/her. As delicate as our hearts may be, the act of sharing is one of the strongest form of expressions that we can show to our love ones that we indeed love them wholeheartedly. The life that we have is meant for sharing. We were not born to be secluded in our own world. But we were born to share this life with another. And being able to open up to another person and have your life, your heart being put under their care is a tremendous form of expression of our love for them. Because the act of sharing our life means that we trust them. We cannot share if we can't trust.
My friends, Earthbound Angel is my expression of what Christian Love means. I know that during these time, there are a lot of us who turns skeptical when it comes to loving another. And we can't blame ourselves for feeling that way. Love has been tainted by so many false hopes and dreams. When I started writing the song, I was in a struggle. In between believing and not believing. And it is evident from the opening lines of the song alone that I was hoping I could fly away from all of those false hope that comes with loving. But then I remembered the values that makes love work. I could have chosen to fly away from believing. And join the multitude of others who wouldn't want to give love to another significant person... (though they can still love in other ways, thats why I still call them angels) but I chose to believe in Loving another significant person all over again... Let's not gloss love with too much romantic hopes. Romance could die, but Christian Love is eternal. Why be an angel up in heaven when we can be Earthbound Angels with our significant other?
