The Story Behind My Song “One Day”

I don’t remember ever praying as intensely as I did one evening in 2008. It wasn’t a life or death situation at all, the sky wasn’t falling, and in retrospect I probably overreacted just a little bit. In the moment though, I was borderline panic-stricken. These are the events that lead up to that prayer-infused summer night.

After graduating college in 2007, my first job was truly a golden one: teaching middle school language arts at the incredible Baha’i-inspired School of the Nations in Brasilia. The icing on the cake was sharing an apartment with a unique and fantastic individual, Vahid. He was there to teach kindergarten. We hit it off right away and discovered a mutual passion for music. We didn’t waste a second–we put prayers and Writings to music, with me on the acoustic guitar and Vahid taking care of most of the singing. His voice was both full of power and spirit, piping out notes high and low that I could scarcely reach on my best days. Over the course of that year, we offered our music at Feasts and Holy Days, and we created our own music as well. 

Playing and creating music with Vahid was an unforgettable experience, one so special that after saying “tchau” to Brazil, we decided to become homefront pioneers in Brick City, Newark, New Jersey. 

In the summer of ’08 we were honoured and humbled to be invited as musical guests to a Baha’i summer school in Louisiana. The organisers asked us to prepare for an hour and a half evening program, which seemed a bit long to me but luckily Vahid was a great performer with a stage presence big enough for the both of us. 

In the weeks prior to the summer school, we put in countless hours practising and assembling a program that felt right for a summer school and, knowing our air fare was being covered, we worked to the best of our capacity.

Twelve hours before we were scheduled to take off, my phone rang. 

It was Vahid. 

My heart sank as he uttered the words: “I can’t make it to summer school.”

An unexpected difficulty in his life made it impossible for him to board our flight in the morning. After a few flailing attempts to find a solution, I came to the realisation that I only had two choices: cancel the whole thing, or go it alone. That’s when I started to pray, to really pray. 

Looking back on it, I’m filled with a sense of extreme gratitude that I had, and have, this most potent instrument to call on and draw from in times like these. 

In a pilgrim note, the Guardian gives five steps for using prayer to solve a problem, the final step of which is:

“Act as though it had all been answered. Then act with tireless, ceaseless energy. And as you act, you, yourself, will become a magnet, which will attract more power to your being, until you become an unobstructed channel for the Divine power to flow through you.”

He goes on to say: “Greater than the prayer is the spirit in which it is uttered, and greater than the way it is uttered is the spirit in which it is carried out.”

In my own feeble way, action in that moment immediately after prayer took the form of instinctively picking up my guitar and trying my best to be an unobstructed channel. The song “One Day” was the result. 

The song is based on a recollection of when a high school teacher found out about my “strange religion” and was curious. But when she asked me if the Baha’i Faith came from Islam, all I could muster up as a reply was a feeble “Yeees,” without uttering another word. 

By the grace of God, and loving encouragement from my parents and a lot of other amazing people, my life path led to a place where the Faith became my absolute focal point, where I began truly striving to live the life. I would eventually gain the courage and eloquence to respond to questions with more than one-word answers, and learned more and more how to impart the spirit of the Teachings to others. But what if that hadn’t been the case? What if I had gone straight into college, instead of deciding to do a year of service in Ecuador? What if during college I had just gone through the motions of studying and taking exams, instead of striving to weigh all of my new learning in light of the Revelation of Baha’u’llah, and also being actively engaged with the Institute process on campus? What if, after college, service to the Cause and to humanity had become a mere footnote in a life full of cares, worries, and constant things to get done? 

These and many other questions were swirling around in my mind as I began playing the first chords of the song that would become the centrepiece of the summer school program I would go on to create well into the wee hours of the morning and on my flight to the summer school. I named the program: SERVE NOW AND DON’T WAIT!

The program I came up with was filled with stories, poems (written by others), and some of the songs Vahid and I had written together. I sang his parts to the best of my ability, and while it didn’t come close to his vocal mastery, I felt as though he were right there with me, just like when we were back in Brazil. The evening ended with me singing the song “One Day”, and as the final note rang out, a sense of immense relief and gratitude enveloped my being.  

My hope is that this song will be a source of encouragement for us all to keep service at the centre of our lives. I am truly grateful to my friends for their unfailing support as I strive to make music in that same spirit of service. Their kindness makes me think of the words of Abdu’l-Baha: “where there is love, nothing is too much trouble, and there is always time.”

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Hayden Weiler

Hayden is a singer-songwriter.