“Babylon” is a song about someone on a ladder. I recognized myself in it before I recognized anyone else.
Everyone wants to talk about this song as a miserable guy who just can’t accept his life. There’s so much more to it than that, and if we get stuck on the bad-relationship aspect, we miss the real lesson.
The ladder
The song opens with someone who’s never satisfied. The neighbor’s lawn looks better. The hand-me-downs should have been new. There’s always a next job, a next thing, a next rung. They feel suffocated by their current life.
Then the chorus hits, and it uses a song as a metaphor for a life.
And you hate this song
But you wake up on the train with your headphones gone
Then that melody is all you want
You never knew that it was Babylon
'Til it was gone
One day, that song, that life, isn’t available anymore. The life you couldn’t stand turns out to be the one you wanted all along. You don’t know how fantastic it was until it's gone.
I’ve been on that ladder. I wanted the title. I wanted the money. I wanted to feel important, like I was special, like I was someone who mattered there. I wanted people to see me as successful. Like my life was worth something.
Sometimes, when the next rung isn’t there, we build it ourselves. We want perceived success so badly that we start making it up. It starts with a gleam of truth, then gets stretched a little longer each time you tell it. Eventually it gets so big you can’t reach it, can’t contain it, can’t even get your own arms around it anymore. That’s how the mask stops being something you put on and gets cemented into your life.
Very quick lab coat moment. A 2016 study out of University College London found that small self-serving lies tend to grow over time, and the brain’s alarm response to them gets quieter with each one. The first stretch feels wrong. After enough of them, it barely registers.
The whole time I was climbing, I felt nothing inside, because I wasn’t doing a job that fulfilled me. I was doing what fulfilled the role I was playing.
That’s why I crashed so hard into the Ashes when the role was gone. (I get into that whole story in the book.) I had used the role to define me. It was the mask and the costume. Once it was gone, I saw what I’d been missing: what was at home, and what I actually wanted, which was to write, to help people, and to serve somewhere I could see the difference I was making. All of that faded while I focused on doing more and looking better.
That’s why I’m so passionate about helping people and workplaces build satisfaction that belongs to the person, not just the role.
The Christmas lights
Then there’s the other side of the mask. I wore that one, too. Yeah, I’ve made my rounds through The Spiral many times.
And they're all at home
She's hanging Christmas lights with your son
Sneak into the bathroom to call her mom
And say, "It's not working
It's just not worth it if we're not what he wants"
This story mirrors my own so well that it is cool and creepy at the same time. I was trying so hard to make that life a home. One year, we’d taken all the Christmas decorations down, and the living room was covered in them. Madison was two, barely standing, holding on to the tub and pulling out Christmas lights, making an even bigger tangle than they already were. We all know how Christmas lights get, no matter how nicely you wrap them at the end of the year.
He told her to stop. She didn’t, because, well, she was two. Then he yelled.
I remember it so vividly. Damian was sitting on the coffee table. Madison plopped down on her butt and started crying, and that upset him, too: Why are you crying? Then he stormed out onto the front porch.
That was another Ember moment. Why am I living like this? When did this become an okay part of my life?
The flame
The Flame is where that question is answered.
What I couldn’t see then was that we were both wearing a mask. He was climbing for an image, and I was decorating for one. Two people performing a life, and neither of us living in the actual room. We were both living for more.
His mask was the ladder. Mine was the home. I was trying to keep the beautiful house and do all the beautiful things, as if the right Christmas could make it the right life. It would never be what he wanted, and I kept decorating anyway.
Years later, I’d wear the same mask at work. Different costume, same rule: do more, look better, and maybe the role will finally feel like enough.
A mask holds up until the moment it doesn't. Mine burned off after that night, with a two-year-old crying on the living room floor. After that, the decorations were just decorations. The flame revealed what was under the mask, and underneath it was the only thing that mattered: my kids, in that room. And once the mask burns off, you can't put it back on, no matter how many times you try.
It’s easy to turn the past into a weapon against yourself. I already messed it up. I’ll never get that back.
You're using nostalgia as a weapon to hurt yourself
But darling, you end up hurting everybody else
The self-harm of never being where you are
Meanwhile, the best parts of the life you have now are sitting right in front of you, and you’re too busy mourning the last one, or chasing the next one, to see them.
So, where’s your ladder?
You don’t have to wait for a two-year-old on the floor to find out what your mask is costing you. You can check now, while the lights are still up.
What rung am I reaching for right now, and who told me I needed it?
Is any part of the story I tell about my life a little bigger than the truth?
Who’s in the room that I keep looking past?
If you answered any of them faster than you wanted to, that’s your flicker. Pay attention to it.
Take the mask off long enough to look around the room you’re already in.
