"We measure our days out in steps of uncertainty not turning to see how far we've come. And peer down the highway from here to eternity and reach out for love on the run"
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Time gets turned into mileage, but the odometer is broken. Al Stewart’s line trades in motion - steps, highway, the run - to show how a life can feel relentlessly forward without ever feeling legible. “We measure our days out in steps of uncertainty” lands like a quiet admission of adulthood: not the grand arc you expected, but a series of provisional moves, each one taken without the comfort of knowing what it adds up to. The sly sting is in “not turning to see how far we’ve come.” Progress exists, but the narrator refuses the one act that would make it meaningful: looking back long enough to claim it.
Stewart’s intent isn’t to romanticize restlessness; it’s to catch the way modern living makes reflection feel indulgent, even dangerous. If you stop, you might discover you’re farther from your earlier self than you can bear. “Peer down the highway from here to eternity” stretches the frame from personal anxiety to cosmic scale. It’s an old folk-rock move - the everyday image as metaphysical portal - but Stewart keeps it grounded by returning to human need: “reach out for love on the run.” Love isn’t a destination, it’s a drive-by. The subtext is brutal: in a life organized around momentum, even intimacy gets treated like something you snatch while speeding past.
Contextually, it fits Stewart’s songwriting persona: literate, rueful, fascinated by time and narrative. The line reads like a postcard from the touring life, too - always moving, always arriving, never staying long enough to feel arrived.
Stewart’s intent isn’t to romanticize restlessness; it’s to catch the way modern living makes reflection feel indulgent, even dangerous. If you stop, you might discover you’re farther from your earlier self than you can bear. “Peer down the highway from here to eternity” stretches the frame from personal anxiety to cosmic scale. It’s an old folk-rock move - the everyday image as metaphysical portal - but Stewart keeps it grounded by returning to human need: “reach out for love on the run.” Love isn’t a destination, it’s a drive-by. The subtext is brutal: in a life organized around momentum, even intimacy gets treated like something you snatch while speeding past.
Contextually, it fits Stewart’s songwriting persona: literate, rueful, fascinated by time and narrative. The line reads like a postcard from the touring life, too - always moving, always arriving, never staying long enough to feel arrived.
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