🎧 "Oxygen" by BINI

TL;DR

A song that celebrates life itself while also acknowledging the struggles we face E-V-E-R-Y single day.

When I first listened to this song through its music video, I expected it to be the typical song about love. You know, loving someone else and that person being the "oxygen" that sustains you, but the first lines immediately proved me wrong.

Master Jho serving very real lines right there and I found myself crying. From that point forward, the song's meaning (at least for me) shifted from loving a specific person to loving one's self, one's vocation, and ultimately, life itself.

I won't claim that BINI, all its eight members, the song's writers, or the staff behind them genuinely believe in the song's message because (a) I don't know that and (b) that doesn't change how the song affected me. Every time I listen to it, the lines "woke up, thank God" and "last night, close call" both haunt and inspire me in equal measure. They most likely always will.

I was once a Roman Catholic, then a Born Again Christian, but now, I don't know. I still write or select "Christian" when filling out forms for simplicity's sake but I have a very complicated relationship with divine power(s). I want to believe in one but, looking around and hearing stories about people who are supposedly closer to one but take advantage of others?

Daily, I'm also struggling with depression. Lack of close and genuine relationships, fear of the uncertain future, and regret from the past are daily realities that make me constantly ask "What's the point?"

This song is one of those that help with that question.

Not by answering it, but by acknowledging the difficulties and still being excited about life anyways.

There's no promise of a better tomorrow, just a reminder to love the present that's been given to us. Most songs that want to inspire focus on the future: the promise of something great, the idea that "it will be worth it", or that things will get better. Those are all well and good but that's not for everyone all the time.

When at your darkest, it's not always the promise of light that keeps you going. Sometimes, what sustains you is the knowledge that you still, and will always, have someone: yourself.