The series ‘The Affair’ opens with this song. It has a haunting quality. I’ve never heard such soothing attitude towards life summed up in so few words. Be the wave you are and sink back into the ocean.

We’re a mere blimp on the radar in the ‘grand scheme’ of things.

As one grows older you lose any grandiose aspirations and you have no illusions as to what you can achieve in the 24-hour day we are all restricted by.

What else is there to do for a human being, except to do as you feel is right, true to yourself, until your dying day?

So many events and dynamics are entirely outside of our control.

I don’t like many trends we see today, politically, socially, economically. I do not have the required arrogant charisma one needs to be heard in this world, unless one on one, in a therapist’s seat. Just today I have been accused of being a Goody Two Shoes, not exactly a label that will cause a stir in the political arena.

I have to learn every day to just let it slide, to let go, and just be who I am until I will vanish, do what this society wants to pay me money for, which I only need as a way to keep score (am I doing something?) and to sustain life until natural causes or a plane crash strip it off me.

In the end you can only hope to make a comfortable amount of money in a way that’s not too stressful and doesn’t conflict too much with your morals, and to try and help people along the way, and not cause loved ones too much harm. It’s always our loved ones that fall victim to the violence of our needy egos.

Just do what you truly feel you need to do, until death relieves you of duty. If there’s more to a life, in a world with lots of restrictions, I haven’t spotted it.

There’s comfort in that, and you can’t demand more, no matter what the self-help industry preaches.

[Verse]

I was screaming into the canyon

At the moment of my death

The echo I created

Outlasted my last breath

My voice it made an avalanche

And buried a man I never knew

And when he died his widowed bride

Met your daddy and they made you

[Hook]

I have only one thing to do and that’s
Be the wave that I am and then
Sink back into the ocean
I have only one thing to do and that’s
Be the wave that I am and then
Sink back into the ocean
I have only one thing to do and that’s
Be the wave that I am and then
Sink back into the ocean

[Outro]

Sink back into the o-
Sink back into the ocean
Sink back into the o-
Sink back into the ocean
Sink back into the ocean

Source: https://genius.com/Fiona-apple-container-lyrics