This afternoon I was listening to music on YouTube for the first time in a while. I usually have my music on my phone, that way I can listen to it on the go. I didn’t realize how much I missed watching videos on YouTube until I stumbled across Craig Morgan’s “This Ain’t Nothing” music video.
I remember listening to this song when I was younger when it came on the radio. I don’t even think I liked it when I was that young, because I didn’t put the deeper meaning with it. In fact, I didn’t truly put the deeper meaning in it until last year, the most recent time I heard it before today.
I feel like Craig Morgan has a lot going for him. He is a respectable person, he is a talented musician, and he manages to stay away from the drama of what seems to be the life of being famous. Not only that, but he is also a pretty good-looking man. With that being said, I think we can all agree than I’ve made you wait long enough to see what old man I am talking about.
In the music video, Craig sings about a reporter who interviews an elderly man after a twister passes through Birmingham where he lives. The twister destroyed his home and everything in it. The reporter asks the man:
Tell the folks please mister, what are you gonna do,
now that this twister has taken all that’s dear to you?
But the reporter got an answer that he never expected…
The old man just smiled and said,
Boy let me tell you something, this ain’t nothing…
This old man, you know, seems pretty tough. He didn’t cry like the audience would have thought. He didn’t ignore the question like some would have thought. He just answered honestly, in his purest form.
Most of us would cry, knowing that we just lost everything we have ever worked for. Knowing that every single penny we put into building a foundation is now gone.
But some people always decide to see the good in every single situation that is horrific. The old man explains why he thinks that the twister that hit his house is nothing. He said:
I lost my daddy, when I was eight years old,
That cave-in at the Kincaid mine left a big old hole,
And I lost my baby brother, my best friend and my left hand
In a no win situation in a place called Vietnam
And last year I watched my loving wife, of fifty years waste away and die
And I held her hand til her heart of gold stopped pumping,
So this ain’t nothing.
This old man lost just about everything he had. His wife, his brother, his dad, his left hand, and his best friend. Little do we realize that when we lose even one person in our life we think that it is the end of the world. Losing anyone, no matter what way, has a toll on our minds forever.
This old man stuck through everything and kept going. Even the hardest things to deal with didn’t keep him from living his life even if there wasn’t much of it left to live or wasn’t anyone else to live for.
But why would you need someone to live for?
Why did living for yourself and your own benefit become almost unrealistic?
Toward the end of the song is when I started to tear up. Not because I realized what was said in the beginning of the song, but because I realized how much truth was in the words that this man was saying.
This man was on his own because everyone he had in his life had died. As did his wife, just the year before.
When he looked down on the ground,
He reached down in the rubble and picked up a photograph
Wiped the dirt off of it with the hand that he still had
He put it to his lips and said man she was something
But this ain’t nothing
This man, he knew. He knew what it was like to want for something that he couldn’t have. He knew how it was to have a love that money couldn’t buy. This man saw the difference between something that truly mattered and something that really didn’t.
The old man’s last words in the song are what truly got to me. He said,
This ain’t nothin’ time won’t erase
And this ain’t nothin’ money can’t replace
Money. We all think money is what runs the world. As that is true, there are many things that money cannot buy – here are a few…
1. Love
2. Happiness
3. Respect
4. Trust
5. Value
6. Memories
7. Life
So that should leave you with the thought, “Well, what can money buy?”
Money can buy almost everything that isn’t a necessary tool for healthy relationships or a healthy life.
This man knows what the genuine value of something is. He knows that it will just take money to bring back his house, but that no amount of money in the world will bring back his wife or his brother or his father and his best friend.
Money never brought this man happiness. And little by little his happiness was taken away from him throughout life.
Not by things money could buy, but by things it couldn’t.
It is sad to believe that we rely on money to control any part of our happiness.
How about we try to think like this man for a day in our lives. Oh, what difference it would make!
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