Never had a chance to pause to get a better glance

Its surprising how insightful pop songs turn out to be sometimes. Especially if you engage in some selective interpretation.

The subject for today: Limp Bizkit's "Lonely world"

Had a lot of fun living life on the run,
Never had a chance to pause to get a better glance
Everything was free and everything was fast
Never even thought it wouldn't last

Yep. Its very easy if you have specific and fixed goals in life. Like graduating high school, then university, then earning your PhD... Or finding a girlfriend and a future wife. And once that happens... well... you rarely if ever think past that, because - well, these goals are definitely worthwhile, so who cares what comes after?

You are basically living in a myth you have created for yourself. You are on a magical quest that will grant you salvation if you finish it, at which point you will live happily ever after. Or at least so you believe.

One slight problem with that though: real life and fairy tales are two very different things. But, since you are constantly in a hurry, you somehow fail to notice that small but significant detail.

Or rather, you build your world view based on such a conception, so this is essentially how the world seems to work for you.. and you build your world view around that - making this core assumption hard to criticize.

So. The aim of your life is to achieve the desired goals as fast and effectively as possible. So, everything that gets you closer is useful and meaningful. And everything that doesnt, isn't.

However, sooner or later you realize that this is so only for yourself. Others have different goals, aims and ways. But you adapt by just letting others do as they want. Your goal, concerning others, is just to understand their behavior, so you could best account for it in choosing your own actions. Criticism is pointless, for it causes conflicts, which only slow down progress towards The Goal. You soon become pretty good at giving interpretations to other peoples behaviors. However, you rarely, if ever validate them with others - which means you end up with a very good theory that is often useless in practice. In short:

When you go the mind of a man in the middle
Life is just a big fat riddle, so figure it out
Always thinking that you know
Every little thing there is to know.
Buy you don't really know, ya know?

At some point, reality comes knocking at your door. Hard.

You either fail at one of your goals. Or even worse, you succeed. And ask yourself the inevitable question: What now?

And have your world collapse into tiny pieces. Pieces that used to fit together, but no longer do.

One way forward would be to set a new goal and start running blindly towards that. But that seems... pointless... for you know achieving that will make you no more happier than you currently are. And you are not happy.

So you realize that the problem is deeply rooted in your conception of the world. In your innermost core beliefs. The ones you just know, beyond question. Because if you could question them, they would instantly collapse because of their sheer idiocity.

But you now know they exist. You may not be able to find them yourself but - hey, what are friends for?

So you ask your friends. And they tell you that you are living in a stupid myth about salvation and that it is driving all of them crazy.

So you start looking for a better alternative. And look at what they are doing themselves. And realize many of them have myths even stupider than yours is... but some don't. So you try to understand how their belief systems work.

So what do they believe?
That you are not in a hurry to get anywhere. You are allowed to take your time. You have the perfect right to be who you are, as you are. And so do others. That everything around you is real, but all the worry is illusory.

With the mind of a man in the middle
It could be the end of the world as we know it
Still I never want it all, and I never want it now
I just want to cruise, if I loose then I'll figure it out

Constantly in motion, but still at rest on some deeper level. They have what one of my friends called a "metaphysical shelter" - something inside them to fall back on when everything outside has hit the rocks. Belief that everything will be alright, or rather that everything IS alright.

True confidence. Not that stupid posing and game-playing people often mistake for self-confidence.

You contrast this with your own previous belief about salvation through hard work and have a good laugh.

At yourself. And the world around you.

And then start putting the pieces back together. And find that although some have to be thrown out, you do not have to start from scratch either. After all, you have a life full of experiences behind you and it is just a matter of interpreting them in the new framework.

How the times flies, even with the blink of an eye
When you're young you absorb like a sponge in disguise
Then you get a little older and gather your thoughts
It's amazing what you learn
When you've never been taught, ya know?


Phew. This is probably way more meaning than the song originally intended.

But somehow it clicked with me, and I have the perfect right to overinterpret it.

The perfect right :)