| I read a lot about
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| Terrible things that people have done to each other
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| You just cannot
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| Even imagine it, it’s so awful!
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| So you don’t wanna be someone like that
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| Now do you have a reason to be?
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| Yes, you have lots of reasons to be!
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| God, there’s reasons to be resentful about your existence
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| Everyone you know is gonna die
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| You too! |
| And there’s gonna be a fair bit of pain along the way
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| And lots of it’s gonna be unfair
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| It’s like, yeah!
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| No wonder you’re resentful
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| It’s like act it out, see what happens
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| You make everything you’re complaining about
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| Infinitely worse!
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| There’s this idea that hell is a bottomless pit
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| And that’s because no matter how bad it is
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| Some stupid son of a bitch like you could figure out a way to make it a lot
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| worse!
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| That’s what life is like
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| It’s suffering!
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| That’s what the religious people have always said
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| Life is, life is suffering
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| Yes! |
| (Watcha gonna do about it?)
|
| Life is, life is suffering
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| Yes! |
| (Watcha gonna do about it?)
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| What do you do in the face of that suffering?
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| Try to reduce it!
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| Start with yourself
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| What good are you?
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| Get yourself together for Christ sakes! |
| So that when your father dies,
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| you’re not whining away in the corner, and you can help plan the funeral
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| And you can stand up solidly
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| So that people can rely on you
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| That’s better, don’t be a damn victim
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| Course, you’re a victim!
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| Jesus, obviously!
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| Put yourself together
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| You know how to do that
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| You know what’s wrong with you
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| If you’ll admit it
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| You know there’s a few things you could like polish up a little bit
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| That you might even be able to manage in your insufficient present condition
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| So you might shine yourself off a little bit, and then your eyes will be a
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| little more open
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| Then you can shine yourself up a little bit more
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| And then maybe you could bring your family together instead of having them be
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| the hateful, spiteful, neurotic, in-fighting bastards you’re doomed to spend
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| Christmas with
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| Life is, life is suffering
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| Yes! |
| (Watcha gonna do about it?)
|
| Life is, life is suffering
|
| Yes! |
| (Watcha gonna do about it?)
|
| So, then you fix yourself up a little bit
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| Kind of humbly because you know, God
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| You’re a fixer-upper if there ever was one
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| And then you gotta figure out how to make peace with your idiot brother
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| And probably not because he’s just as dumb as you, so how the hell are you
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| gonna manage that?
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| So then maybe you get somewhere that way, and your family starts functioning,
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| and you find out that kind of relieved a little bit of suffering,
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| although it reduced the opportunities for spiteful revenge and that’s kind of
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| a pain in the neck
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| And so, when you get your family together a little bit, and you’re a little
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| clued in then, at least a bit because you’ve done something difficult that’s
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| actually difficult
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| You’re a little wiser, so then maybe you could put a tentative finger out
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| beyond the family
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| And try to change some little thing without wrecking it
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| Our society is complex
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| And we teach our students that they can just fix it
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| It’s like go fix the military helicopter, and see how far you get with that
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| You’re like a Chimp with a wrench, whack! |
| «Oh look, it’s better!»
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| It’s like no! |
| It’s not better!
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| Things are complicated and to fix things is really hard
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| And you have to be like a golden tool to fix things
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| And you’re not!
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| And that’s the other message of the West
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| How do you overcome the suffering of life?
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| Just be a better person
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| Life is, life is suffering
|
| Yes! |
| (Watcha gonna do about it?)
|
| Life is, life is suffering
|
| Yes! |
| (Watcha gonna do about it?)
|
| Life is, life is suffering
|
| Yes! |
| (Watcha gonna do about it?)
|
| Life is, life is suffering
|
| Yes! |
| (Watcha gonna do about it?)
|
| That’s how you do it
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| Well, that’s hard
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| It takes responsibility
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| And I think, you know, if you said to someone
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| Do you wanna have a meaningful life?
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| Everything you do matters
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| That’s the definition of a meaningful life
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| But everything you do matters!
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| You gonna have to carry that with you
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| Or do you want to just forget about the whole meaning thing and
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| Then you don’t have any responsibility because who the hell cares and
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| You can wander through life, doing whatever you want gratifying impulsive
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| desires
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| For however useful that’s going to be, and you’re stuck in meaningless but you
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| don’t have any responsibility, which one do you want?
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| Well, ask yourself
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| Which one are you pursuing?
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| And you’ll find very rapidly that it isn’t the majority of your soul that’s
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| pursuing the whole meaning thing, because look what you have to do to do that,
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| you have to take on the fact that life is suffering you have to put yourself
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| together
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| In the face of that
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| Well, that’s hard!
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| Christ was made 'cause people couldn’t even do it
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| I’m stunned everyday when I go outside and it isn’t a riot
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| With everything burning
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| Watcha gonna do about it?
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| Life is, life is suffering
|
| Watcha gonna do about it? |