I Get It Now

JJ Heller builds this song out of delayed understanding rather than instant wisdom — watching her father cry at her high school graduation and not knowing why, until she has children of her own and finally recognizes the tears. Each verse repeats that pattern: something incomprehensible in the moment, understood only much later.

Her second verse turns the delay painful rather than sentimental — a stroke that "tangled up his mind" right after a Christmas when "everything was fine." Heller doesn't soften the fragility she's suddenly aware of: "you don't know what you have until it's not around."

Moses asks God in Psalm 90:12 to "teach us to number our days" so people gain "a heart of wisdom," and James 4:14 compares life itself to "a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Heller's closing resolution — learning to slow down because "each breath is a gift" — treats that fragility not as a reason for anxiety but as the actual reason to pay attention now.