Do you know what's worth fighting for?
When it's not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away
And you feel yourself suffocating?

Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart inside?
You're in ruins

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms, give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I

When you're at the end of the road
And you lost all sense of control
And your thoughts have taken their toll
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul

Your faith walks on broken glass
And the hangover doesn't pass
Nothing's ever built to last
You're in ruins

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms, give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I

Did you try to live on your own
When you burned down the house and home?
Did you stand too close to the fire
Like a liar looking for forgiveness from a stone?

When it's time to live and let die
And you can't get another try
Something inside this heart has died
You're in ruins

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms, give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms, give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I





That's 21 Guns by Green Day. There's stuff in it that speaks, frankly. Like 'throw down your arms'. It doesn't mean for you to amputate your limbs and throw the bloody soggy mess on the floor, it means for you to put down your weapons. People like us carry weapons around with us all day - you just don't know it. We're carrying words for bullets, arms for spears and our own brain for the tank that spearheads everything. I still don't know why people discriminate against people who are different from others. They're just being odd - are they afraid of what's different, because they don't know what's there? Maybe they just haven't tried. They just condemn people.

Like people shun the LGBT community because they think someone's gonna fall for them just because they're LGBT.

Like people shun others in class because they like different things and maybe have different views in things like religion.

Like people fit stereotypes to everything, like no one expects me to be vegetarian or to love playing my piano.

Like people just think that hanging out with people outside your clique of friends is bad. Like Sarah Dahlberg put up black boards around her desk to keep her from seeing Agatha and Miriam. So you don't like them, fine. Why block them out and tell them (without words, that's the worst thing) "I HATE YOU, I DON'T WANT TO EVEN SEE YOU."



Do you know what's worth fighting for?
When it's not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away
And you feel yourself suffocating?

Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart inside?
You're in ruins


Why fight so much over just something as simple as a boyfriend? (I'm referring to some in class.) Why fight and show that you hate someone and hurt the other person just because you don't wanna sit next to them? (Again I'm referring to people in class.)

I don't know why we fight. I don't know why North Korea still has Taepodong under construction, why Germany wanted to conquer Europe, why Japan wanted to conquer Asia either, why the Catholics and the Protestants were fighting in Northern Ireland, why the Sinhalese and the Tamils were fighting in Sri Lanka. Fine, I know the reasons behind the conflict. It's in my SS notes.

But what I DON'T know is why we can't all just lay down our arms, recognize that we're all broken-hearted people inside, that we've fought since the breaking of dawn, the consciousness of mankind, and that it's time to stop.

I know we're never going to stop arguing in between humans. Humans just have an innate nature to argue. I know we're never going to stop feeling angry, and I'm not advocating that, because I think excising emotion, any kind of emotion at all, is wrong.

But what I think we all need to realise is the fact that humans have been fighting against every single one of their kind for eons, since the dawn of humankind. And we need to stop, slowly. We're all the same, underneath. We're all humans, with screams trapped inside, with dreams longing to burst free, we're all people with feelings, thoughts, emotions...

And no matter how different we may seem, we're still all the same inside, really.