If you dare follow me long enough you’ll find out that I have no one favorite genre of music. I find people who limit themselves to a musical genre are limiting themselves and therefore are boring. Imagine that you try to walk or drive anywhere on roads that only have even numbers. You’re actually making your life a lot more difficult and you could be missing out on a lot of cool things.
That being said, I heard this song yesterday and when I woke up this morning it was still in my head, that’s how this whole Song of the Day (SotD) started about a month ago on my Discord server. Now that I brought it here since I decided to set things up.
Well, here’s why I like this song. If we are honest with ourselves, we all have felt stuck, or even trapped, at times in our lives. Well, this was about a 10 year period in my life from about 1996 to 2006. This is essentially the time period immediately after graduating from my first university, and a period of almost continuous job hunting, attending “how to get a job” seminars and basically feeling as though I was going absolutely nowhere. During this period I was also suffering from severe depression. Afterall, when you are still externally validating your existence and you are sending out 20-30 resumés a week and getting only even maybe one rejection a month, what is a guy supposed to think?
Here’s my perspective. My father had lots of problems but the one thing I feel that he got mostly right was that he never pushed my brother and I in a particular direction. However, something I did get from him is that if you want it and you can’t borrow it, make it, then you had better well work for it. Nothing was just given to you because you were just there, everything has a price and if you want something you need to pay the price. So, at 15 I went to the Private Industry Council, signed all the papers and went out and got a real job. (Before that I mowed lawns.) My father though was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. He also demonstrated that no matter how hard you work, no matter what other people promise, you may not get what you want, or even need.
Still, I went to the university because I, and my father I later find out, believe that this is what I needed to do to get a job. I did it. I may not have been the brightest bulb in the light bar but I did it. I get out and find out that so many people, who are hiding behind the facade of companies, aren’t looking for reasons to hire you, rather they are looking for reasons to not hire you.
Now, don’t flip out, there’s always exceptions but by now I’ve been on both sides of the fence now. I’ve been in the electric chair and one of the people pushing the button. If you don’t believe me, look at blind box ads and now AI video interviewers, both disadvantage certain populations of people who could likely very well do the job you need them to do but who you will never meet because they aren’t able to jump through the eye of your needle.
So, what does all of this have to do with this song? Nothing, everything, what does it matter anyway? This is my blog and this has been what this song reminds me of, me and the other millions of people who get stuck in situations that they don’t want to be in but aren’t being given what they need to actually be happy. It doesn’t matter if they’re disabled like me, poor, have a different skin tone and yes, rich people can feel stuck too. It’s not a socio-economic, race or disability thing. It’s caused by a culture and society that locks people into little boxes, melts the keys and stuffs gum into the tumblers. I’m not saying that this is only done by the 1% of the wealthy. No, everyone does it. We all judge, we all classify, pigeon hole and judge. Don’t tell me you don’t. It’s part of how our brains work.
We can break the pattern though. Learn something new, talk to a stranger, or order something completely wild and new from the menu.
Flip a coin.
