This post dedicated to you, if you need encouragement.
Yeah, the rain came independence day
With an old flag, washed and raised
And the chid sang, all fall down
No one heard it, not a sound
Yeah the rain came, turning gray
And the jury went out to play
“Doesn’t matter,” someone said
“There’s tomorrow, go to bed”
(I be)—No drama—(happy)—no trauma, down in the jungle
Down in decay
(I be)—Getting older—(happy)—getting over
Something is different
Something has changed
In the jungle where the beat is strong
Nothing’s shocking, loud is long
Like the middle of a dream
I was woken when I screamed
I could never go back to that old prison of my youth
“Move forward,” someone said,
“you can make it—
“Watch your head”
(I be)—No drama—(happy)—no trauma, down in the jungle
Down in decay
(I be)—Getting older—(happy)—getting over
Something is different
Something has changed
And when your world comes crashing down (uh huh)
And there ain’t nothing you can do about it (ain’t nothin’ you can do about it)
And when everybody’s done you wrong (mmm, nothin’ right)
And your feeling torn down (feelin’ all torn down)
Now the Kingdom of everything’s within (of everything!)
And to love yourself is not a sin (love is not a sin)
And if there’s a Light inside, it’ll shine—
And if there’s a Light inside, it’ll shine
(I be)—No drama—(happy)&151;oh!, no trauma, down in the jungle
Down in decay
(I be)—Getting older—(happy)—getting over
Something is different
Something has changed
Something has changed
© 1998 King’s X — King’s X — Tape Head (1998, Metal Blade Records) — “Happy”
This song has encouraged me when I’ve been down, opened my eyes to the beauty of experiencing whatever it takes to get wisdom and be unafraid of growing older, and kicked my ass into gear when I’ve started listening to the jury who refuses to judge and the people who tell me to go back to bed. It’s not often we hear of youth being spoken of as a prison, but that was my experience—not that my childhood wasn’t wonderful, but that youthful pains and heartbreaks are always more intense because of a powerlessness to do anything about it or to know how to cope. For King’s X, this is an album about moving on and shutting ears to what the crowd wants. For me, it’s about wisdom, graceful aging, and never, ever giving up, even when “your world comes crashing down.”
If you need a good word today, I humbly submit to you this lyric, this word. If there’s a Light inside, it’ll shine: move forward. You can make it, but you’ve already grown, so emerging from the seeming stooped doorway of this present moment into the next, watch your head.
January 17th, 2007 at 14:09:35
[…] Are we content to live slothfully yet miserably within our own narrow parameters we in our frailty have tried to impose upon the world and so bury the talents we’ve been given, or do we push ourselves to learn, to grow, to love, to forgive, and to do all the rest of the things that entropy and flesh would have us neglect? Do we claw in vain at the riverbed of Time to hold on to the familiar and the comfortable, and so spend our lives always on the brink of death by drowning in our own arbitrary rules—sentencing ourselves to suffering that is unique to the self-willful failure to adapt and grow, to forgive and let go, to take on the new and the dangerous if it will mean change? The human—not the spirit, the body, or the mind, but rather all these and the private world of his experience—was meant to adapt, to flourish under pressure, to endure, to grow and move at the same pace as the rock onto which he was born, hurtling through space and time. […]