This may be one of the best writing prompts I have seen.
Even thinking about the answer makes me smile.
Some songs do not simply play. They arrive. They kick the door open. They bring light with them. They grab some younger version of you by the hand and pull him back into the room before you have time to argue with memory.
For me, that song is “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves.
I am Gen X, so that song does not just sound like music to me.
It sounds like high school.
It sounds like MTV.
It sounds like Converse Chuck Taylors hitting the floor with the quiet confidence of somebody who did not yet know all the things life would ask him to carry.
And yes, I had several pairs.
Of course I did.
Some songs make you think. Some songs make you remember. Some songs sit beside you in sadness and help you name the ache.
But this one is different.
This one is joy with its sleeves rolled up.
It does not ask permission. It does not arrive carefully. It does not knock politely and wait to see if you are emotionally prepared. It just starts, bright and shameless, and suddenly the room changes.
That opening hits, and something in me stands up.
Not the serious part.
Not the tired part.
Not the part that pays bills, watches the news, carries old pain, and tries to make meaning out of everything.
The other part.
The part that still remembers being young.
The part that remembers when music videos felt like events. When the world seemed to come through the television in color, noise, and possibility. When a song could live in your head all day and make even an ordinary walk feel like a scene from something larger.
That is what “Walking on Sunshine” does.
It takes me back without making me feel trapped there.
That matters.
Some nostalgia is heavy. Some songs pull you into the past and leave you standing in rooms you cannot return to. But this song does not feel like grief. It feels like a window being thrown open.
It feels like sneakers.
It feels like sunlight.
It feels ridiculous and uncaring.
And yes, it is still on my playlist.
Absolutely.
Some songs earn permanent residence. They survive every version of you. They stay through changing tastes, changing years, changing moods, changing bodies. They remain because they know how to reach a place in you that has not been ruined by time.
That place is important.
We talk a lot about pain. About healing. About survival. About what we lost and what we are still trying to understand.
But joy deserves witnesses, too.
Joy deserves to be named.
Joy deserves its own altar, even if that altar is just a YouTube video, an old song, and a grown man singing like no one is listening.
And that is exactly what I plan to do after I finish writing this.
I am going to play the video.
I am going to let the song do what it has always done.
I am going to smile.
I am going to sing.
Badly, maybe.
Loudly, probably.
Freely, definitely.
Because sometimes the soul does not need a lesson.
Sometimes it needs three minutes and a change of pure, unreasonable brightness.
Sometimes it needs to remember that not everything has to be heavy to be true.
Sometimes it needs to walk on sunshine
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