SWALLOW YOUR PRIDE
. . . YOU’RE GONNA NEED SOMEBODY TO LEAN ON
I’ve often reread a book or rewatched a movie after a decade or three and been affected by it in an entirely different way. But today was the first time I’ve ever had it happen with a song.
I was driving back from the supermarket, knees aching, hoping I wouldn’t get into heavy traffic and have to use the clutch a lot—my car has a standard transmission—and “Lean on Me” came on the radio. There was hardly a line in it that didn’t deeply resonate, but these really stood out: “Just call on me brother, when you need a hand; we all need somebody to lean on . . . For, it won’t be long, ‘till I’m gonna need somebody to lean on . . . Please, swallow your pride, for, no one can fill those of your needs that you won’t let show.”
That “swallow your pride” line hit particularly hard. All my life I’ve been one to give help, but not one to ask for it or accept it graciously. And I’ve always been strong, both mentally and physically, always able to offer help, seldom in need of it. But that’s been changing, rather drastically and suddenly, as over the past year my legs have become quite painful and weak, to the point that at the supermarket I had made it a point to park by the shopping cart corral, so that I could have easy access to one to use as a walker to and from the store. And I’ve been leaning more and more on Ellen, as she has to do alone things we used to do together, like going to late morning exercise classes, picking up lunch, and bringing it back to the cottage. No doubt about it, whatever my problem is, if it keeps progressing I’m gonna need more people to lean on. I’ll have to let my needs show.
None of my problems are special, and they’re not even the real point of this essay—I think it’s this. There is real value in revisiting old books, old photos, old movies, and old music. Try to remember what they once meant to you, how they affected you—and compare that with how you experience them now. You might even write about it, talk about it, share it with friends and family. Because you never know what will come to mind, or what you’ll find, when you try to capture the context of something that catches your attention. Here’s what I learned as I leaned on the Internet, digging for background information for this essay.
“Lean on Me” was written and sung by Bill Withers, in 1972. A fellow West Virginian, Bill was born just three years before me, in the tiny coal-mining town of Slab Fork, “an old time little town where everybody knows everybody,” only 122 miles from Huntington, where I was born. Slab Fork takes its name from the stream that runs through it—and that stream that flows through the town where Bill grew up is a tributary of the Guyandotte River, which flows beside my grandparents’ farm. So, growing up, we shared the same water, waded, fished and swam together, miles apart and unaware of the connection. Bill died in 2020. I wish that I’d had a chance to let him know that, more than 50 years after he wrote it, his song still carries such a powerful message.
“When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” is a favorite adage that Ellen and I share, and it certainly applies to this recent experience. So I’ll just say: Thanks for the song, Bill, and for teaching the lesson I heard in a second listening—when I was ready. Y’all can listen to him sing it at the link below—maybe you’ll hear in it something of what I heard.
And you could come to the Saturday Sing Along, where you might find it on the program—with me accompanying on the ukulele.
