Best Song Lyrics (Part XVI)

Last week I noticed the Songwriters Hall of Fame announced its new inductees.  Along with the songwriter I wrote about way back in Part V of this anthology (Yusaf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens) was the name Tom Petty.

Awesome.

Tom Petty led his band The Heartbreakers onto the rock scene in the late 1970s with a distinctive sound and cool, easygoing lyrics.  Some of the best known songs included The Waiting, Free Fallin’ and , You Don't Know How It Feels (To Be Me).

All of those songs are lyrically terrific, but I'm going with Learning To Fly as my example.  While there is certainly a drug double-meaning, Petty himself said it was really about failing and trying and failing and trying again.  I highly recommend listening to it in its slower, acoustic form:

Well I started out, down a dirty road
Started out, all alone
And the sun went down, as I crossed the hill
And the town lit up, the world got still

I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings
Coming down, is the hardest thing

Well, the good ol' days, may not return
And the rocks might melt, and the sea may burn

I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings
Coming down, is the hardest thing

Well, some say life, will beat you down
Break your heart, steal your crown
So I've started out, for God-knows-where
I guess I'll know, when I get there

I'm learning to fly, around the clouds
But what goes up, must come down
I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings
Coming down, is the hardest thing

Don't Buy The Fake

Society doesn't accept emotionally fake people, right?  People who mislead in order to make themselves look better are eventually exposed, then ostracized by others.

It's the same for intellectually dishonest people.  If someone lies about the facts in order to make themselves look better, society is usually quite efficient at discovery and excommunication.

Then why are we so willing to accept physically fake people?  Those folks are also doing something to make themselves look better, yet others often encourage them to repeat that behavior.

From plastic surgery to artificial hair to indoor tanning, people have plenty of ways to pull off the physical-fake.  Unless it's taken to the extreme, we accept that it's better to look good (and younger) than to feel good.

I suppose faking the physical self isn't harming others, so we let it go.  But is it really harmless?

I'm not so sure if obscuring the physical-you is any better than obscuring the emotional-you or intellectual-you.  I don't buy that faking it should be allowed in anything.  (Yes, even that.)

In matters of integrity and trust, I'd rather deal with someone being honest in all three.

Charlie

I've written on several occasions about the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.  Most associate it with Warren Buffett, but it also stars his vice-chairman, Charlie Munger.  Both are very smart and witty, but Munger has a slightly more acerbic style.

Last week someone forwarded an article to me with 29 of Munger's most interesting quotes.  They are the kind of things he says at the Berky meeting all of the time.  The guy is awesome.  I'm just going to throw out a few of best ones (in my opinion), and this is just a short sample:

"The right way to make decisions in practical life is based on your opportunity cost. When you get married, you have to choose the best [spouse] you can find that will have you. The rest of life is the same damn way."

"What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability. If you’re unreliable it doesn’t matter what your virtues are. You're going to crater immediately. Doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability."

"Some people are extraordinarily good at knowing the limits of their knowledge, because they have to be. Think of somebody who’s been a professional tightrope walker for 20 years – and has survived. He couldn’t survive as a tightrope walker for 20 years unless he knows exactly what he knows and what he doesn’t know.  He’s worked so hard at it, because he knows if he gets it wrong he won’t survive. The survivors know. ... Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant."

"Another thing that does one in, of course, is the self-serving bias to which we’re all subject. You think the 'True Little Me' is entitled to do what it wants to do. And, for instance, why shouldn’t the True Little Me overspend my income. There once was a man who became the most famous composer in the world but was utterly miserable most of the time, and one of the reasons was because he always overspent his income. That was Mozart. If Mozart can’t get by with this kind of asinine conduct, I don’t think you should try."

"The highest form that civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust — not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another. ... In your own life what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust. And if your proposed marriage contract has forty-seven pages, I suggest you not enter."

"Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not something you do just to advance in life. Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. As a corollary to that proposition which is very important, it means that you are hooked for lifetime learning. And without lifetime learning, you people are not going to do very well. You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know."