What We Love
In the end, what we save, G Am
In the end, we will save what we love. D7 D+ G G#dim D
Do you love? Are you brave? G G7 C Am
In the end we will save what we love. D7 D+ G G#dim D
Instrumental G Am D7 D+ G G#dim D7
What we love in the end’s G G7 C Am
Only what we can understand. A7 D D+
Do you love? Understand? G G7 C Am
Holding all of the world in your hand? D7 D+ G
Instrumental G Am D7 D+ G G#dim D7
G G7 C Am D7 D+ G
Will you leave it to burn?
Or be teaching the love that you learn?
Understand what you have.
In the end we will save what we love.
Instrumental G Am D7 D+ G G#dim D7
In the end, what we save, G Am
In the end, we will save what we love. D7 D+ G G#dim D
Do you love? Are you brave? G G7 C Am
In the end we will save what we love. D7 D+ G G#dim D
In the end we will save what we love. D7 D+ G G#dim D
©Doug Hendren 2025
What’s it about? This song was inspired by the Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum’s famous assertion “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”
When it comes to our natural world, it seems that most of our choices are based on economics. Yet, as Oscar Wilde observed, we may know “the price of everything but the value of nothing.” We seem to know a great deal about money, but understand comparatively little about the true value of our natural world.
As a native American saying goes, “When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”
Joni Mitchell summed it up in 1970: “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” Let’s not wait to find out. Can we really be that foolish?
