All I want to do is be more like me

The Retune Blog - 3rd May 2024

Saturday night we went to our first ever rock n roll bingo. If you’ve never been, forget everything you thought you knew about bingo. I mean, I used to love going to bingo with my mum, but this was something else.

You get a card with band names instead of numbers and then you basically get a disco with a mix of hits, dancing on the benches, singing along and winning weird prizes. What is there not to like?

One of the songs played was Numb by Linkin Park. It seemed sort of fitting really. If this was bingo reimagining itself away from the preconceptions and restraints, this was a messaged echoed in the song:

I'm tired of being what you want me to be … All I want to do is be more like me

I love the lyrics (and energy) of this song. I’ve become acutely aware over the past ten years that to live life well I need to live life as me. It may sound obvious, but how much of the time do we end up living according to what others expect of us. The song puts it like this:

Don't know what you're expecting of me, put under the pressure of walking in your shoes.

To be clear, it’s not that we are just to live as individuals with no consideration for other people. We are part of a society and need to live as a community. However, this doesn’t mean just fitting in with expectations which don’t make sense and don’t really bring life in its fullness. The song challenges us to be more, to live more and to be authentic. Yet it also challenges us to do this whilst thinking of our position as people who are part of society:

So much more aware, I'm becoming this …

So, just like rock n roll bingo, this song by Linkin Park challenges us to find our authentic self and live it in the context of caring about those around us, not as self-centred individuals, but as self-aware, playful, boundary pushing people.

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