Sing for the Moment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4hAVemuQXY

“Well, I did join in with the singing. I didn’t ask any questions—I just went along with it… My mother had stopped singing, and she was crying… On the way, I said, ‘Why are you crying, Mother?’ She said, ‘Because we could sing better songs than those.” — Educating Rita

I really loved Educating Rita when I first saw it, although “loved” might be a bit strong because, if I’m honest, I probably just agreed with whatever my older sister said at the time. She was the clever one. Dad used to call her “Brains,” that puppet off the telly.

What I really felt was a sense of comfort, a familiarity with Rita. She had a northern accent, she was clever and funny without meaning to be, and she didn’t quite fit where she was supposed to.

When I think back to being a young woman like Rita, who was twenty-four in the film, it got me thinking. I used to think the environment we’re brought up in decides whether we are successful or not.  That meant not even getting a lift to the starting line, for me, let alone getting in the race. Now I see Rita was successful in spite of her environment, not because of it.

When I say successful, what I mean is the trophies that define this, such as certificates, rings, children, the house we live in and the cars we drive. What the world sees on the outside. But success can be measured in many ways, depending on how you interpret it. It’s not how many trophies you have to display to show the world that you matter or you are important, it’s how you feel on the inside is the real measure of success. Rita did what she wanted to do, and that meant she was successful, in my eyes anyway.

I’ll give you a little taster of my environment. I was born and raised in the northeast, and we didn’t have what other people had. Dad wouldn’t even buy a TV—we rented one from Radio Rentals for years in case it broke down, which it probably never would have done, and I’m fairly sure we paid for that one TV several times over.

The telly had a power in our house. That’s somewhere else where I learned how to be. Growing up with programmes like The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, and Charlie’s Angels, I wanted to be like them.

All kids pick messages up from parents who don’t even realise the effect they have on their kids.  For example, we get praised for doing right or being good, and we think, ah, what makes me good enough is…? Fill in the blank. Whatever drives you is what goes there. And in a more driven media centric world the adverts and constant messages people get are multiplying.

I didn’t realise at the time that I had a string of these beliefs I’d made up, but they showed up in my life. I beat myself up and thought, there’s something wrong with me, I’m not right in the head.

This was the pattern. I’d start something, and at first, it would feel like this might be it, like I’d finally found the thing that would make everything make sense. I’d throw myself into it, really believe this time it was different. But then, somewhere along the line, something would shift. Not all at once, just a feeling that I wasn’t quite right for it, or it wasn’t quite right for me, and once that thought was there, it was hard to ignore.

I tried countless things to feel successful—be successful.  I tried education, starting my own business, took courses in self-help. I did yoga and, meditation.  But every time I completed it and the learning was over. It was back to square one. It was like playing a constant game of snakes and ladders. Five steps forwards, I’m good, one step forward, and I hit a snake and I’m back to the start again.  So, I had to physically take myself out of the game. I went on the sick at work, burnt out, emotionally drained and zombified. Then my mam was diagnosed with terminal cancer in May 2025 and died on New Years Eve 2025, which felt like bad timing more than anything else, because my sister said, “I knew she’d ruin our party,”  

After she died, we cleared her council house. She’d lived there for fifty years. We had to strip everything out, even the carpets. The system doesn’t switch off just because one human does.

We had a straight-to-the-furnace funeral. My sister said, “What’s the point in spending money on an expensive coffin when it’s going to get burnt?” We decided not to have a service either. Again, my sister said it was a waste of money, and I agreed.

I don’t like funerals anyway. Aren’t they just capitalising on grief? No one escapes death. At least with things like weddings, you get a choice—you can spend or not, or not do it at all.

And after that, I rested and lay in bed all day. To be honest if lying in bed was an Olympic sport I could have been a contender.  Then I started to look at myself. I pinned myself open like one of those frogs in biology, and examined what was really there. That sounds extreme when you say it like that, but that’s what it felt like trying to see what was actually going on underneath everything else.

And what I saw wasn’t particularly comfortable, which was that I wasn’t really that interested in other people, not in the way I’d always told myself I was. That’s not an easy thing to admit, even now. There’s still a bit of shame in it. It wasn’t deliberate. I would have said I cared, and part of me probably did, but most of the time my attention was somewhere else—what do they think of me, how am I coming across, what can I get from this—and I didn’t even realise I was doing it. The truth was I felt disconnected most of the time and didn’t know what to do with that.

So I kept chasing anything that gave me a spark—a conversation, a person, a moment—anything that made me feel something. It worked for a bit, just enough to keep it going, but it also kept me stuck in the same loop. After a while, you don’t even realise you’re doing it. You just move through life like that, not really present, filtering everything through what it means about you rather than what’s actually there.

I think that’s partly why I’m writing this. Not because I’ve got it all worked out, but because I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere, even if “somewhere” means keep moving. But in reality I'm not going anywhere. Because all we really have is ‘moments of time’, ‘snap shots’.

I think for a long time I was like Rita's mother, looking for a better song to sing, one that would inspire me, move me, mean something, fill something up in me that always felt a bit empty. But it’s not really about a better song, is it?  What’s better for one person isn’t for another. It’s about a different song.

When I stopped chasing rainbows, what was left wasn’t bright or obvious or even reassuring, it was more like walking into a dark forest, with a sign at the entrance saying, “Don’t go in unless you want to die.” But you go in anyway, and there are lions and tigers and bears (oh my). Once you’re in, there isn’t a way round it. The only way out is through.

And I’ve been in that forest and come through it. And it’s all returned to the start of the song. But this time I’ve changed the record. It’s a new one. It’s not better—it’s just a different song. This song says it way better than I ever could.  

 “Sing for the Moment,”  written by Eminem.