Vivid Sondheim lyrics: you decide alone
We saw “Into the Woods,” Stephen Sondheim’s 1987 musical of merged fairy tales, here in Seattle at the 5th Avenue Theatre the other night. It’s so full of wit and emotional rollercoasters (and LYRICS! the sheer number of words in this play, my goodness) that it delighted and exhausted me at the same time.
I was pretty worn out when, in the middle of the second half, Cinderella and other characters, struggling with terrible losses, sing “No One Is Alone.” The first line made me sit up and listen: “Mother cannot guide you / now you’re on your own,” and later, “you decide what’s good / you decide alone” made my heart pound.
This is the truth of childhood mother loss. I made decisions alone. I decided what was good and bad, what was right and wrong for me at school, in relationships with friends, everywhere. Help and input from adults — even though I had plenty of kind adults around me — was catch as catch can. Maybe because as a child, you can’t really describe your struggle.
As a child, I also couldn’t see past the end of my nose. So my decisions didn’t always serve me as well as possible in the long run. (Example: go to the closest high school rather than a better one, so that I can walk to and fro and eat lunch at home.) As a young adult, the most personal decisions — the ones involving setting boundaries in relationships — became almost impossibly hard because I was more aware of the stakes. I wanted what was right for me, but I also wanted (almost more) to avoid loss.
When I finally realized I was entitled and obliged to make these personal decisions on my own, I felt I was settling down onto solid ground after dashing back and forth on tiptoe. I didn’t need anyone else to tell me what was right, or to weigh in, and no one else could anyway. It was a revelation that made me finally feel like an adult, when I was twenty-nine.
“Wrong things, right things
Who knows what she’d say?
Who can say what’s true?
Nothing’s quite so clear now
Do things, fight things
Feel you’ve lost your way?
But–
You decide
You decide alone …”
I had never seen a song or any written piece portray my particular way of feeling it: YOU get to, AND you have to, decide what is right. You’re free, in a way that doesn’t always feel good.
The song has many other lines and goes on to reassure us that no one ever is alone; you are not alone. Beautiful thoughts and words. But the salute to the decision made alone is what speaks to me the most.
