It's from being melancholy and having my human down experiences that I learn, that I overcome, that I transform - and these realizations I put into song. That's what I choose to put in my backpack and carry with me around the world.
Interpretation
Embracing sadness leads to personal growth and creativity.
In this quote, Jason Mraz expresses the idea that his struggles and melancholic feelings serve as the foundation for his learning and transformation. He chooses to carry these experiences, along with the insights gained from them, as valuable assets that inspire his songwriting and enhance his life's journey.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing life's challenges.
There's a certain feeling of giving, a certain feeling of generosity in love songs. When you sing a song of love, you're actually giving something to yourself, too. You're singing and casting these affirmations of love out into the universe.
I think it's important to earn your fan base and not just try to immediately advance to the top. If you ride to the top quickly, you're liable to fall as quickly. Take your time. It's a long journey ahead of you as an artist. There's nowhere that you're supposed to be other than right now living inside of your art.
You can't live the rest of your life carrying a pain because your parents couldn't get along. I choose to spend my life crafting a joy.
Another year is fast approaching. Go be that starving artist you’re afraid to be. Open up that journal and get poetic finally. Volunteer. Suck it up and travel. You were not born here to work and pay taxes. You were put here to be part of a vast organism to explore and create. Stop putting it off. The world has much more to offer than what’s on 15 televisions at TGI Fridays. Take pictures. Scare people. Shake up the scene. Be the change you want to see in the world.
We can't plan life. All we can do is be available for it.
One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.
Life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.
I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine.
With the draft, everybody was involved. Everybody was fodder. When you got to be 21, 22 and graduated from college, for two years your life stopped. If you had been running in the direction of your life, you had to stop and do this other thing which was, if not menacing, just plain boring.
Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.
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