“You Will Be Found” by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

Credit:youtube.com

There’s a reason the lyrics to “You Will Be Found” have been translated into four languages. The world has embraced this song from the Tony-winning Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen.” Though it serves as the anthem for the play’s namesake, a lost teen who suffers from a social anxiety disorder, all of us worldwide cannot help but relate to the questions “You Will Be Found” poses at its start.

Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?
Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
Like you could fall, and no one would hear?

Surely death has robbed us all of the presence of loved ones we once relied on for companionship and support. But don’t we also feel invisible when our closest friends and family members are so easily distracted from face to face connections by screens, large and small? Unlike the tree that falls unheard in the proverbial forest, we can suffer indelible emotional damage when we feel unnoticed, and our spirits descend to the depths of loneliness.

The advice offered to the lonely Evan Hansen in the second stanza of “You Will Be Found” may at first seem easier said than done:

Well, let that lonely feeling wash away
Maybe there’s a reason to believe you’ll be okay
‘Cause when you don’t feel strong enough to stand
You can reach, reach out your hand

How does one reach out to a society that seems, so often, otherwise engaged? Ironically, Evan finds support when, in response to a fellow classmate’s suicide, he expresses his grief in the only place he seems to feel he has a voice — on an online site dedicated to the memory of the young man who took his own life. Overnight, the medium that seemed to block his existence from peers obsessed with their devices, puts him right smack in the center of their on-screen universe.

“Dear Evan Hansen” is still playing on Broadway,
as well as on national tour
Credit: Ajay Suresh via Wikimedia

And oh, someone will come running
And I know, they’ll take you home

Evan’s commemoration of his classmate goes viral.  As it turns out, countless others had felt the isolation that loss bequeaths on the grieving, an isolation they too kept themselves from expressing. In the storyline of “Dear Evan Hansen,” people around the world are touched by Evan’s honest outcry. By commiserating with the online community and assuring them, “You will be found ” Evan, once shrouded in silence, brings together so many other silent sufferers. Thanks to him, they have found their own voices as well.

Even when the dark comes crashing through
When you need a friend to carry you
When you’re broken on the ground
You will be found

Back in the day, we would reach out to the bereaved with a visit, a note, a hug. But “You Will Be Found” offers a new way we can comfort the grief-stricken, giving credence to virtual communication as well. Heartfelt and sincere online comments, however, are usually accessible to a wider audience than the person or family you are addressing. And the sender of the message should keep that wider audience in mind.

Kind, genuine and compassionate words left in an online obituary guestbook or memorial social media page can bring comfort to the bereaved. Reaching out with the right words reminds them they are not isolated, alone or forgotten. Many read and reread the online messages and may continue to do so for years to come, just as the words to this song will endure.

You can listen to an original cast recording of “You Can Be Found” here. However, the rendition posted below better reflects the song’s global reach in the real world. From Japan to Norway, fans from 31 countries around the world lend their hearts and talents to the “You Will Be Found” Virtual Choir, proving once again that every voice matters.