Life Is Suffering - Akira the Don

I read a lot about

Terrible things that people have done to each other

You just cannot

Even imagine it, it’s so awful!

So you don’t wanna be someone like that

Now do you have a reason to be?

Yes, you have lots of reasons to be!

God, there’s reasons to be resentful about your existence

Everyone you know is gonna die

You too!

And there’s gonna be a fair bit of pain along the way

And lots of it’s gonna be unfair

It’s like, yeah!

No wonder you’re resentful

It’s like act it out, see what happens

You make everything you’re complaining about

Infinitely worse!

There’s this idea that hell is a bottomless pit

And that’s because no matter how bad it is

Some stupid son of a bitch like you could figure out a way to make it a lot

worse!

That’s what life is like

It’s suffering!

That’s what the religious people have always said

Life is, life is suffering

Yes!

(Watcha gonna do about it?)

Life is, life is suffering

Yes!

(Watcha gonna do about it?)

What do you do in the face of that suffering?

Try to reduce it!

Start with yourself

What good are you?

Get yourself together for Christ sakes!

So that when your father dies,

you’re not whining away in the corner, and you can help plan the funeral

And you can stand up solidly

So that people can rely on you

That’s better, don’t be a damn victim

Course, you’re a victim!

Jesus, obviously!

Put yourself together

You know how to do that

You know what’s wrong with you

If you’ll admit it

You know there’s a few things you could like polish up a little bit

That you might even be able to manage in your insufficient present condition

So you might shine yourself off a little bit, and then your eyes will be a

little more open

Then you can shine yourself up a little bit more

And then maybe you could bring your family together instead of having them be

the hateful, spiteful, neurotic, in-fighting bastards you’re doomed to spend

Christmas with

Life is, life is suffering

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

Kind of humbly because you know, God

You’re a fixer-upper if there ever was one

And then you gotta figure out how to make peace with your idiot brother

And probably not because he’s just as dumb as you, so how the hell are you

gonna manage that?

So then maybe you get somewhere that way, and your family starts functioning,

and you find out that kind of relieved a little bit of suffering,

although it reduced the opportunities for spiteful revenge and that’s kind of

a pain in the neck

And so, when you get your family together a little bit, and you’re a little

clued in then, at least a bit because you’ve done something difficult that’s

actually difficult

You’re a little wiser, so then maybe you could put a tentative finger out

beyond the family

And try to change some little thing without wrecking it

Our society is complex

And we teach our students that they can just fix it

It’s like go fix the military helicopter, and see how far you get with that

You’re like a Chimp with a wrench, whack!

«Oh look, it’s better!»

It’s like no!

It’s not better!

Things are complicated and to fix things is really hard

And you have to be like a golden tool to fix things

And you’re not!

And that’s the other message of the West

How do you overcome the suffering of life?

Just be a better person

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

Well, that’s hard

It takes responsibility

And I think, you know, if you said to someone

Do you wanna have a meaningful life?

Everything you do matters

That’s the definition of a meaningful life

But everything you do matters!

You gonna have to carry that with you

Or do you want to just forget about the whole meaning thing and

Then you don’t have any responsibility because who the hell cares and

You can wander through life, doing whatever you want gratifying impulsive

desires

For however useful that’s going to be, and you’re stuck in meaningless but you

don’t have any responsibility, which one do you want?

Well, ask yourself

Which one are you pursuing?

And you’ll find very rapidly that it isn’t the majority of your soul that’s

pursuing the whole meaning thing, because look what you have to do to do that,

you have to take on the fact that life is suffering you have to put yourself

together

In the face of that

Well, that’s hard!

Christ was made 'cause people couldn’t even do it

I’m stunned everyday when I go outside and it isn’t a riot

With everything burning

Watcha gonna do about it?

Life is, life is suffering

Watcha gonna do about it?