Mercy writes about the difficulty that many of us in searching and establishing our identities as independent, unique, yet socially accepted members of a community. Perhaps this search is even universal! Many of us seek identity from what we do, and she contends that work goes beyond being a monetary exchange for mere sustenance but can provide meaning and satisfaction to our lives.
---
Mercy Laine
Let me introduce a song "Hard to Survive" to you. "Hard to Survive" was written and sung by Cagnet, a mysterious and vanished band. Cagnet used to be super popular in Japan in the late 90s. However, just after releasing two famous albums, they disappeared. Until today, we barely have any information about them. They came mysteriously, staying in fog away from the public, and then left silently.
There's definitely nothing to write about the band, but there are a lot of things I want to talk about this song. The first time I heard this song was from "King of Comedy" (喜劇之王 1999). Its melody repeatedly showed up at very touching moments in the movie, but I had no idea about the lyrics yet at that time.
After quite a few years, I heard the full version of it by chance, with lyrics this time. I was totally caught. I finally began to realize why they chose this song for that movie. The themes matched perfectly, since "King of Comedy" was telling us how hard it is to "survive" in this world for everyone, no matter of ordinary people or super stars.
"Survive." What a tricky word! What does survive really mean?
Ok, let's use "common sense" to answer this question first.
Food, of course, is the most important aspect for everyone. Since we need to eat, we need energy, we don't want to starve to die. Our bodies are roaring to us everyday: "I want food! I want to SURVIVE!"
In order to buy food, we need money. Then we come to the point of how to survive financially. Working hard is the normal way to support ourselves. The work I am talking about here are not narrowed down to any specific type of jobs. For instance, being a good student and getting a scholarship could be a type of work to survive as well.
Usually after being satisfied physiologically, our brain begin to rebel, "I am bored like hell! I am stressful! I want entertainment to relax!" Fine, just working like a cow wouldn't really make us really "survive," because eventually we might collapse quickly after a while of high intense work for food. Then we need hobbies in our lives. We need something that interests us and could shift our attention.
However, in some cases, for some people, what they are doing could be really entertaining to them. Additionally, it is really common that we treat our work as a way to build our self-esteem, but not just for supporting ourselves financially and getting food. We even can say that actually categorizing work just as tools to get food is really sad. Whatever we are doing daily, should really bring us much more than just physiological satisfactions.
Ok, I just mentioned self-esteem. Since self-esteem leads to self-satisfaction and self-confidence, it plays such an important role in our "identities." Identity usually involves questions such as who the heck am I? What the heck am I doing? Why the heck I exist in this universe? Everyone always finds a unique way to gradually build up an identity. What is the possible consequence of identity loss? Take a look at the serial killers in some "special cells" in prisons and then you will know. Therefore, to find an identity and a life purpose would be one of the most important things we need to do in order to really survive in this world.
We strive to exist as unique persons. We are always seeking for some sort of agreement and understanding from others. Usually we even tried pleasing our parents unconsciously to seek for agreement when we were still kids. Family members, teachers, friends, bosses, co-workers, society, and whoever showed up in our lives are all the potential targets for us to strive for affirmation from. Everyone craves for affirmation desperately in order to build a great self-esteem. The biggest problem here is, human beings are known for being selfish and greedy. Therefore, a lot of people choose the easiest way to survive in the case of self-esteem: being arrogant and self-righteous.
I think there does not exist a word in the history book of human beings: "HUMBLE." We should really learn how to spell this word and carve it on our foreheads and repeat it at least three billion times everyday. Quite a lot of people pretend to be the omnipotences of the universe with this kind of attitude: whatever you say must be doubtful and problematic; whatever I say must make sense and meaningful. However in most of the cases, whoever thinks everybody else are idiots, then he himself is such an idiot.
On the other hand, being overly humble, which means being unconfident, could be really problematic as well. Low self-esteem could trigger tons of other problems because that might means that we do not have the right attitude or philosophy to deal with our lives. How to find the proper way to build confidences on, is a major issue in a lot of people's lives.
Conclusively, going extreme does not help build the "right" identity and attitude at all. In order to survive in this area, and find a meaning for our lives, we might still have a lot to struggle with. But just as these several sentences in the lyrics said:
"It's so hard to survive in these days and times
It's so hard to love but not so hard to pray
Was it so hard to survive?"
We pray, we love and eventually, we will survive in this crappy crazy world!!!
******************************
Hard To Survive
Composed By 日向大介
Album:《喜剧之王》OST
Edited By Fan Sail
You can't sleep at night caught up in the times of yourself hypocrisy
You're not knowing you're sleepwalking, in and out you go
Tell me what you're gonna do when I'm not there for you
And tell me why you wanna go through things you don't have to
To survive (to survive) in these days and times (in these days and times)
Was it so hard to survive?
It's so hard to survive in these days and times
It's so hard to love but not so hard to pray
Was it so hard to survive?
Cut you like a knife blinded by the side of life that burns in you
You're running out of time, can't walk the line you smoke that turns you blue
Tell me what you're gonna do when I'm not there for you
And tell me why you wanna go through things you don't have to
To survive (to survive) in these days and times (in this days and times)
Was it so hard to survive?
You're not knowing you're sleepwalking, in and out you go
Tell me what you're gonna do when I'm not there for you
And tell me why you wanna go through things you don't have to
To survive (to survive) in these days and times (in these days and times)
Was it so hard to survive?
It's so hard to survive in these days and times
It's so hard to love but not so hard to pray
Was it so hard to survive?
Cut you like a knife blinded by the side of life that burns in you
You're running out of time, can't walk the line you smoke that turns you blue
Tell me what you're gonna do when I'm not there for you
And tell me why you wanna go through things you don't have to
To survive (to survive) in these days and times (in this days and times)
Was it so hard to survive?
---
No comments:
Post a Comment