Dare You to Move: It's only the beginning...

Note: This is an essay that displays my personal beliefs. it is not intended for anything else than just an analysis on how the song has touched me... peace.

“I dare you to move, dare you to move! I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor…”

And with those timeless words, Jon Foreman penned one of the most impactful songs of recent memory. For me, it’s just that, and so much more.

I first heard this song back in 2003, as a wide-eyed, innocent (yes, I guess you could say I was innocent) 13-year old kid, in eighth grade. I guess you could say I was also that boy who was “fumbling his confidence.” At the time, I was quite intrigued by the song, but not overly interested. My friends played it after church on the stereo, and we were often seen jamming out to it, while people gathered around singing along. I only knew the drum beat because my amigos told me what beats to play… But it began to truly take hold for me a year later…

…When I bought “The Beautiful Letdown.” At the time, “Meant to Live” and “Dare You to Move” were all over the place, and I suppose I was a bandwagoner of sorts. But when I began to play “Dare You to Move” on my little Creative Zen Touch mp3 player, my relationship with the song began to truly develop. Yes, songs can be relational with humans… the way I see it, movies and tv can touch your mind and thoughts, but music permeates the soul, whether for good or bad. Music is very powerful indeed…

So, this was 2004. Freshman year of high school for me. This was a time of growing pains and experiencing new emotions for the first time. Things were closing in, growing up was such a strange, new experience; so where do you turn when these things happen? Where can we go when things let us down? From what I’ve seen, people turn to anything from drugs and alcohol, to confidante friends and peers. For me, besides God, it was music. Looking back now, it seems lame to be broken-hearted over relationships that didn’t even exist, or one essay a week, but for me at the time, it was a big deal. “I dare you to move, I dare you to move…” howled Jon in my ears, and as I listened to the song over and over and over again, it became a part of my thoughts, a daily cry, a struggle...

Fast forward to 2005, sometime in November or so. I was standing with my friend and a few hundred other people in a sweaty, unbelievably loud club, singing along to those very words that got me through essays, projects, math problems, emotional highs, emotional lows. “I dare you to move, I dare you to move…” And even as Jon sang, I felt a stirring in my spirit, a lifting up if you will. Seeing the emotion the man put into his song, a song that he plays night in and night out, really made it real to me. That he was able to sing with the same passion, even at the end of a long, long tour, was beyond me. Without me even knowing it, that song came alive for me that night… That experience, my first time seeing Switchfoot live ever, was life-altering indeed.

Over the next two years, and as I begin to enter adulthood, this song still carries a special place in my heart. “Dare You to Move” was dominant in the soundtrack of my four years in high school. I rode in the car with this song playing, I played it and sang it with my own guitar, I cried myself to sleep listening to the song, grasping every word of this prophetic song… “I dare you to move… I dare you to move…” It’s as if God was speaking through Jon, to me personally, to lift myself up off the floor. As if He was saying, “These hardships, these broken-hearted moments, these pains of growing up are only temporary and wont last forever.” In times like this, I am reminded of 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says, “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” Forget yesterday! “I dare you to move like today never happened before…” forget about today and its hardships! Look to tomorrow. What a declaration of hope and faith… and yet, there’s always the fall out, the tension that we face… even in the face of hope…

“The tension is here… between who you are and who you could be… between how it is and how it should be…” Throughout life, there will be tension. It’s a fact. However, I think those temptations and tensions are only temporary and are a testing ground, to further the strength and courage of the tested. It’s almost as if when we find ourselves boxed into a corner, with the world caving in, and a feeling of helplessness washing over us, we are dared to move, to run to the Source of Salvation to escape from ourselves. We are dared to just surrender… what a beautiful paradox it is! When we are dared to do something, it usually requires a great act of pride and recklessness; but this song brings a different perspective! It’s a dare to move away from the pride, away from reckless abandon, and to embrace surrender, embrace the fact that we can’t make it alone… such a beautiful message.

This song has touched me in so many ways, and to list them all down will take forever… so… the question that begs to be asked is:

“What happens next?”

“I dare you to move…”

Love,
Job



“This song is an attempt to honestly face the gap between who I am and who I want to be; between the way the world spins and the way the world should be. I've heard that we only use a small part of our brain. Maybe our soul is the same way. And maybe we're half asleep most of our lives, simply reacting to the stimulus our brain receives. Action, true action is rare indeed.
This is an anthem of action and responsibility.” – Jon Foreman (aka, frickin’ genius)