Prompt from Emily Bartran: “Advice from celebs can be hit or miss—but when they hit, they tend to really hit. What’s a piece of wisdom that came from a celebrity that shocked or inspired or epiphanized you into living a happier life?”

Perhaps not an Us Weekly celebrity but certainly an epiphanizer to many, Glenn Frey, lead singer of the Eagles, sang the short and sweet lyric: “Lighten up while you still can.” I first heard this song (“Take It Easy”) as a child. I remember my dad, while balancing the checkbook and drumming his pen on the kitchen table, suddenly belting out the chorus, “Come on bayyyyyybeee, don’t say mayyyyyybeee.” I didn’t understand the song, but I knew it evoked an effervescent emotion, and I wanted to feel it.

Later, in a severely depressed part of my twenties, I heard that specific line again, and I thought to myself, “Well fuck that. I’m not lightening up at all. I’m dropping deeper into the dark daily. It’s too late for me.” I was fighting tooth and nail just to get out of bed. If any emotion was evoked, it was a deeper despair.

But as they say, third time’s a charm, and hearing this line during the pandemic made me laugh right out loud. No, things hadn’t gotten better. They were getting worse by the second. The covid deaths, climate crisis, political unrest, racial injustice…now there was positively no way for anyone, anywhere to lighten up. And there’s nothing worse than when you are depressed and anxious and overwhelmed and somebody tells you to “just lighten up.” The only lighting-up I want to do in that situation involves either burning down their house, or at least smoking a joint.

But for some reason when I heard this lyric, deep in the dumpster fire of 2020, I thought: I have a choice today. I can absorb every bit of negativity and doom and gloom from the world around me, or I can find something to make me happier. Not Happy, just happier. A little lighter. And that’s all I can ask for right now.

So I washed my face, made a smoothie, kissed my dog on the lips, and turned up the music.  And there I stood, imagining a girl (my lord!) in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me. Honestly, there’s nothing better than that.

So lighten up while you still can. One small smile a day keeps the darkness at bay.