27 Feb 18: The Wrong Direction - Passenger

Song: The Wrong Direction

Artist: Passenger

Album: All The Little Lights (2012)

Notable Lyric: "I'd love to feel love but I can't stand the rejection // I hide behind my jokes as a form of protection"

The reason for choosing this song is because of the one particular line of “I love to feel love but I can’t stand the rejection, I hide behind my jokes as a form of protection”

I’ve known this song for 6 years but I find it interesting how some lyrics only resonate with you later on or during a different period in your life.

There are lots of ways to unpack the sentence but I’m going to focus on the words rejection and protection.

First of all, no one likes rejection. It’s a strike to your ego and your self-esteem. Even if it’s a rejection from someone or something you didn’t want approval or acceptance from, the tiny “you’re not good enough” still stings.

I think that the less self-assured you are, the more rejection will affect you. Due to your lack of self-esteem you look for external validators of your self-worth instead of starting from within. This can transfer into romantic relationships where you want to be with the best looking person to show the world (but most importantly yourself) how important or sort after you are.

Similarly in the work place or on social media, do you want to work in that job because it makes you happy or the money and status makes gives people a more “positive” impression of your success and that makes you happy? I’m only scratching the surface here because we can unpack it further to ask why money and status is all that fills the void in your chest.

Onto using jokes and comedy as a form of protection, the reason it resonated with me was during a time of very low self-esteem which forced me to reflect on my behaviour and my relationships with people. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, for myself filling that void was done by maintaining the social expectation of being a “funny” person.

"We don't know what the next man's going through, wish I could say it in a plainer way [...] life reminds me of Robin Williams; we've got to laugh the pain away"

- CeeLo Green & Jon Bellion (Robin Williams)

Someone pointed out that I wasn’t my usual “funny / up-beat” self. The more I thought about it the more I thought I was using humour as a form protection is how you take care of your ego and self-esteem. If I’m making people laugh then they must like me therefore I’m validating myself. Furthermore, I wasn’t being my normal “self” when I wasn’t trying to make people laugh. A book I read recently called 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Wiest stressed the point that your “self” comes with highs and lows. If you’re going through a difficult time, you’re still being yourself as its part of the package.

With that being said, does it not make you think why a number of comedians have revealed that they’re fighting depression? If laughing is a coping mechanism or making other people laugh is a way validate yourself, how many people are doing that in order to fill a void?

*I didn’t find a study that showed a significant correlation between the comedians and depression however it has been the topic of discussion for a while which is why I wanted to write about it.