One of the questions that comes up when writing a song after you have settled on the idea and the feel is whether you are going to rhyme or not. We all know songs that rhyme, don’t rhyme, have near rhymes etc. Each has their pros and cons and the strength of those pros and cons can differ depending on the music genre.

I will posit this as my opinion - it is easier to change opinions than it is to change beliefs. The line drawing between opinions and beliefs is probably fuzzy, however. I would also suggest that your own personality will affect whether seeing facts contrary to your own opinion will cause you to change that opinion. I think this opinion of mine gets some support in a recent paper (abstract published at Close Minded Cognition).

That paper determined that people scoring high in the desire for order, structure and preservation of social norms tend to be less successful at correcting erroneous beliefs when confronted by new information. For those people, a close-minded cognitive style negatively influences belief updating. (click on the title to see more)

My only obviously autobiographical song. Families pay a price for the
games that politicians play that those politicians never pay.

The poem “Flanders Fields” was written by a Canadian doctor during
WWI. It is patriotic and, unfortunately, glories in the continuation
of conflict. Must so many people insist on having an enemy to unite
and fight against?

Lifelong friends who will pick you up when you are down are to be treasured.

There is a difference between politician: “one engaged in party
politics, especially as a trade; one who promotes the interests of a
political party, one concerned with public affairs for the sake of
profit or of a clique.” and statesman: “enlightened, disinterested,
and high-minded service to the state or the people of the state”.

We usually have too many politicians and not enough statesmen.

For my daughter when she was in junior high school. If you insisted on
a rule and justified it because the authority figure said so, you
guaranteed a fight. If you gave reasonable reasons for the rule, there
wouldn’t be any problem. I’ve seen reports that up to 30% of any human
population consists of authoritarians. Those in power want mindless
obedience. Even those not in positions of power want to be
thoughtlessly led and will insist on mindless obedience to authority
and punishment otherwise.

We as adults are afraid of things that we as children were ignorant
of. Sometimes we think it would be nice to be back at that age, but
now we are the ones with responsibility.

Growing up from the parent’s point of view.

Friends thinking back to our childhood dreams and where we ended up instead.

Remember christmas cards and sitting down at the kitchen table,
sending out those once a year notes to friends and relatives. Facebook
is not quite the same.