Life's Ironic Lessons

We have talked a lot about irony in class lately and I started thinking about some songs that I have heard. The first one I thought of is a song by Damien Rice called "Cannonball". The lyrics of this song made me think really hard about how we sometimes learn things in very peculiar ways. This is the last chorus to the song and the full song to listen to:

Stones taught me to fly                                              

Love taught me to lie

Life taught me to die

So it's not hard to fall

When you float like a cannonball

Stones taught me to fly

Love taught me to cry

So come on courage!

Teach me to be shy

'Cause it's not hard to fall

And I don't WANNA scare her

It's not hard to fall

And I don't wanna lose

It's not hard to grow

When you know that you just don't know

We would usually want to be honest with someone we love and care about. When I thought about it, I realized I have been guilty of this. Lying to someone we love to protect their feelings or from harm. We would not expect to learn lying from love but we really do sometimes. Then the lyric of courage teaching us to be shy is strange. We would not think of being shy and having courage to be related to each other. Sometimes is can be courageous to show a shy side even if others might think it shows us to be weak. "It's not hard to grow when you know that you just don't know," this really is true even though it sounds strange. Sometimes we learn and grow not from studying and reading, but from learning life lessons the hard way. Life experiences and the unexpected can sometimes be the the way we grow up the most. We also all know cannonballs certainly do not float. We think of cannonballs being powerful and destroying things they hit. Isn't that true in life? We can give everything we have and be relentless in life, crashing through thing, and then as a result that can cause us pain and inconvenience. We can "fall" quickly from whatever situation we are in if we are powering our way though life not thinking about the consequences. And how can stones teach us to fly? I mean that just seems silly. Stones are heavy and fall easily. So maybe the writer meant we shouldn't be hard, mean, or emotionless. Maybe stones can teach us how not to fall. We can have a "lighter" side of life and not be so "stone cold". I do not know if my conclusions are anything like what the songwriter meant, but I do know as strange as the chorus sounds it is really true to life if you really think about it. The one thing I really think the songwriter was trying to say is love can cause us to do, say, and think a lot of things we might not ordinarily. It really is ironic the way in which life teaches us these lessons.

Sources:

www.azlyrics.com