Sometimes paintings feel too still, too bound to canvas. What I need instead is something that moves with me, that breathes. Lately, that has been Cherish by The Association, from their 1966 debut And Then… Along Comes The Association.
It has played on repeat in my life, not because I want to form a habit around it, but because it captures a truth I can’t shake. Two years ago, I made a resolution: go on a date. It sounds small, but it carried the weight of everything I hadn’t dared to try. I failed. Not only did I not go on a date, I never even said hello. Two years later, the resolution still lingers, but what Cherish offers me is not shame over failure—it’s permission to hold onto the moment of wanting itself.
The song opens: “Cherish is the word I use to describe / all the feeling that I have hiding here for you inside.” What strikes me isn’t the hiding, but the immediacy of it. These are not feelings stretched across a lifetime, but feelings pressed into a single heartbeat. To cherish is to grab onto that heartbeat, to say: this is real, right now, and I will not let it pass unnoticed.
Even when the lyrics darken—“Perish is the word that more than applies / to the hope in my heart each time I realize / that I am not gonna be the one to share your dreams”—there is still a clinging to the present. It’s not about ritual, not about looking back or forward. It’s about naming the intensity of this moment, even if it fades. To cherish is to keep the spark alive as it happens, not after.
Placed among the album’s other tracks, this immediacy becomes clearer. Enter the Young bursts with youthful confidence, Along Comes Mary with rush and intoxication. They are songs of movement, of rushing forward. Cherish slows time down. It pauses. It holds. It doesn’t reach for forever, but for right now. That’s what makes it powerful.
And that’s where it speaks to me most. I have not yet found someone to share dreams with. But I still have moments—moments of hope, of imagining, of feeling my heart wake up even for an instant. Those moments are worth something. They may not lead to love or even to hello, but they are alive, and they are mine to cherish.