Kyle Hepp

August 5, 2007

Here is a translation of the lyrics in case you don’t speak Spanish. The title, No Llores, means Don’t Cry, and it’s by Gloria Estefan. I’ve been way too immersed in Spanish so if the English sounds wonky, it probably is. If you find a mistake, leave a comment and I’ll fix it!

If you’re going to surrender your soul
Do it free from fear
If one learns a lot from love
You can learn even more from mistakes

Ay! Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry
Stop crying, stop crying, stop crying
Stop suffering and let go of your fears
Ay! Don’t cry

If one day, you don’t love me anymore
Say it to my face without betrayals
All the happiness that we lived
Stays in our hearts

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, Ay!
Don’t cry for me, my love
Don’t cry anymore
Don’t cry for me, don’t cry

The day that I die
I don’t want to be sent flowers
Whatever you give me, give it to me in life
There will be no reason for you to cry like that

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, Ay!
There’s no reason for you to cry like that
Don’t you worry, stop your crying
And listen to my song that tells you
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry for me, for me
If you don’t enjoy life, you’ll never be happy

Ay! Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry for me
It’s just that life is too short to keep suffering like that
Ay! Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry anymore
Ay! Life is to be enjoyed, nothing more

Hey! My love, what I want is for you to tell me
You’re not going to cry for me, ever…eh, eh.

I absolutely love this song and the lyrics. If my life had a soundtrack this would be the theme song. Even though it’s more powerful song in Spanish, you can get a general idea from my translation. Basically, what I took from this is that you should appreciate the here and now and take advantage of every minute so that when you die, there’s no reason for anyone to mourn you. The paragraph that I bolded really rang true for me. What’s the use of flowers or pretty words at a funeral?

Whatever you’re going to tell me, or give me, or feel for me, do it while I’m alive to enjoy it!

At my funeral, I hope people have a glass of champagne, make a toast to celebrate my life and dance to this song.

So this weekend when I got in a fight with my husband, instead of crying for hours until he apologized, I sucked it up and said those magic words, “I’m sorry,” first. Who wants to waste a day angry, when you can be happy? Not me.

Instead of drinking beer at a party, I drank a bottle of good champagne…why wait until there’s something specific to celebrate, what’s wrong with celebrating another day of living?

That expression, “live every day as if it were your last,” is so overused. People always say that’s how they want to live their lives, but how many actually do? It’s not practical to live each day as if you were going to die tomorrow. You can’t decide to wake up one day and stop going to work…because if you do that, and you actually don’t end up dying tomorrow, you’re screwed! You’ll probably end up in a little bit of a financial pickle. But you can say “I love you,” more often, pick up the phone when your mom calls and actually listen to her, say yes when you’re friends invite you out, even though you know you’ll be too tired at work the next day and instead of sleeping in, get out and enjoy the day, you never know what you’ll see!

Those are some of the things I’m going to try and change in my life. If you were to apply the same principles to your life, what would you change?