August 25 is the 50th Anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run. It was the album that changed my life. I first heard Born to Run in my late teens, and was immediately drawn to the positive, forward-looking aspect of the record. As a young person, it served as a guidepost of how adulthood “ought to be.” Yet the characters and circumstances found in Born to Run offered enough realism to keep me grounded in the harshness of how life often works out. At 19 years old, I was adamant the cold reality life produces for so many would never get me. Born to Run, and the ideals found in it, was the vessel to take me and my gigantic dreams somewhere big.

In those eight songs on Born to Run I found optimism. With those characters (I once heard Bruce describe them as players in an endless summer n

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