How Linkin Park’s ‘Waiting For The End’ Helped Me Find Closure and a New Outlook on Life

We all have dreams. Goals that we set ourselves so our lives have a sense of meaning and something to look forward to when we wake up early in the morning, ready to face a new day. How many times haven’t you replayed, in your head, a scenario or situation that you wish it to become true. What happens when, after all the time and effort you invested, the outcome is not what you expected? We strive always for success but do you consider the possibility of failure? We prepare ourselves all our lives to succeed, but are we prepared to lose?

I had always been a very proud and somehow arrogant person. Always trying to be the smartest person in the room, and I always thought I had mapped the road to my success from early age. Until reality hit me right in the face and showed me how wrong I was.

We all have a story to tell, and I am glad to know people that have accomplished the goals they have set for themselves. In my case, I am going to explain how hitting rock bottom was the best thing that could ever happened to me.

At that difficult time in my life, it was hard to describe the feeling of not finding a way out. Years later, little by little, I started to reconnect with my family in a way where I am enjoying them as long as time permits it. Dream after dream was crushed but I found alternatives that made my life functional to the point of allowing me to find different goals.

Then, one day I listened to 'Waiting for the End' by Linkin Park and I thought that the song described perfectly what went on during that period of my life. It was depressing to sit through it because it just kept reminding me how many times I lost during my life, but I wasn’t able to stop listening to it.

Why?

Was it because I liked to feel sorry for myself? Was this self-loathing?

The song talks about how we know how to move on from these issues (failed relationships, a bad career move, depression) but deep down we know we are lying to ourselves to avoid our own reality. That we wish to have the strength to stand after seeing that everything that has happened wasn’t because we planned it and therefore, why do we keep going? What’s the point?

One day, I realized I was just hearing the music and not listening to the lyrics. The song emphasizes the fact that, no matter how hard we try to control the factors that determine our lives, it will always be a lost battle:

“All I wanna do is trade this life for something new

Holding on to what I haven’t got”

This verse is the key to the message it wants to deliver. I interpreted it before as wishful thinking and that honestly, even though I had a smile on my face, I didn’t like how my life had turned up until this point. And then, I started to truly listen to the song. The reason why I have been drawn to the lyrics and the reason why I keep playing this great song every time I can, became clearer and clearer.

Life humbled me. I lost, but I never accepted it, and little by little I started to become a stronger person because of it, but I never realized it. I was too focused on the good old days and how happy I was, that I lost sight of all that was good in front of me. That when it was time to move on, I never could. My false sense of happiness crippled me to the point that delusion became so addictive that I confused it with a safe shelter for my heart. I didn’t want to accept that life was able to move on without me.

Now, I listen to this song with a sense of pride not pity. I listen to this song enjoying all I have accomplished so far and not wishing what could have been. I listen to this song ready to learn how to win and to lose.

Most of the time we are unaware of the daily battles people fight within themselves. It’s easy for us to judge the outcome and decide to ignore the factors that lead to said conclusion.

How many of us have felt at some point that waking up is not worth it?

How many of us have look into the mirror trying to find meaning to our lives and even hate that person in that reflection? It is then so ironic, and tragic, that the singer that helped me and others through his lyrics, Chester Bennington, had decided to leave this world.

Chester bought himself 17 years more of life thanks to his band, music and family, but his demons finally found a way to vanquish him. And this is something that most people do not understand. Depression is not something that happen all of a sudden. It is a constant battle within yourself, and Chester had to wake up every single day thinking if that day would be his last.

He was part of several artists and bands that gave a voice to a generation filled with anger and provided a sense of direction to people that didn’t know how to express themselves.

I know this, because I was one of them. I am living proof that it does get better.

Chester is gone, but thanks to him, I’m still here.

And that's what this song means to me.