Failure Notice
You’re not in competition, or at least not how you think
There’s no one else who’s keeping score on how you swim, or sink
You don’t get points for purity, there’s not a Nobel Prize
Awarded for achievement in resisting compromise
And who’s to say the sellouts are much more fulfilled than you?
They might not even like it (although, yeah, I bet they do)
Perhaps they have those moments where they detonate with rage
When forced to face the fakery they show on every stage
They might spend angry evenings lashing out both near and far
At anyone who lets them know what frauds they really are
And though you’d love to think that they have hearts in disarray
It doesn’t really matter because, first, you aren’t they
So even if they suffer it won’t make you suffer less
You’re still trapped with your futile definition of success
And second, let’s be honest, it is not the greatest sin
To discard all the principles that keep you from a win
(It isn’t much to brag about, don’t take me the wrong way,
But look around, there’s people doing worse things every day)
So let’s forget about all that and focus on what counts:
The way you think that happiness is something to renounce
The comforts that you turn aside, the pleasures you dismiss
The part of you insistent on refusing any bliss
The stupid rules you make that only manage to destroy
The very possibility you’ll end up feeling joy
What vanity! What ignorance! What pointless waste of time!
Whatever made you think that being cheerful is a crime?
Are you afraid to take the chance or do you really feel
That wonder or elation are emotions to conceal?
You’re trapped in contradiction from the glee your mind averts:
You know it doesn’t matter, so you don’t know why it hurts