Angst No More

I first heard this song in 2001, the year it was released as a single. 2001 was the time that public musical tastes were switching from boy band bubblegum pop to so-called nü rock, sometimes called nü metal depending on the heaviness of the music. As my peers are familiar with, nü rock is a short-lived genre of rock primarily composed of songs with teen angst themes saturated in lyrics vague or ambiguous enough to pick up emotional issues relevant to the teenagers listening to them.

It was an age of self-discovery for me. I was thirteen, and it was the beginning of my tumultuous adolescence. Like my peers, I was persistently challenged by the demanding requirements of high school education lasting in the next four years. Scholastic responsibilities bore down on me along with bullying experiences that generally broke my motivation to excel at anything I was actually good at.

I was not one of those amazing “inspirational” personalities who overcame their limitations by going to the best universities despite all obstacles, boasting of marvelous academic accomplishments by the time they enter college. My own academic history was widely unremarkable, much to my own regret at present.

But at the time, I seriously felt like I was doing the best I could, and I got angry with my parents for being disappointed in me. And then, I heard this song.

If you’ve heard this song before, you probably already know it’s an anthem for teenagers who feel like their parents persistently criticize them without giving them a chance to feel their way through their daily existence—in other words, “let me make my decisions” so the youngster could learn what is right, by themselves. They feel this much anger because they feel that their parents don’t take them seriously; they feel that they “feel like I am nothing” to their parents.

The music video portrays a teenage boy dining out with his parents. Clips of him singing and screaming the song’s lyrics to his parents who practically ignore him are intercut with clips of them glancing at him only to find him in a calm but passive-aggressive demeanor. They come to the fast food diner where other small families with teenage children are also eating. It seems only the teenagers can “see” the boy in his anguish. By the bridge, all of the teenagers are screaming at their parents who, again, ignore them all—a visual representation of the line: “You don’t know how to listen.” Later, a waitress arrives to deliver food; the expression in her face hints that she somehow sensed the tension in the dining area only to find the customers eating quietly. After eating, the designated protagonist goes to an abandoned parking lot where he sees the Staind band playing until his parents call for him. Then, they go home, leaving the poor boy somewhat helpless—again, a visual representation of the line: “The silence gets us nowhere way too fast.”

Granted, there are abusive parents who shoot “insults and curses” at their children until they “feel like I’m not a person.” But the strange thing is that the kids who listen to this song are exactly the ones portrayed in the video: well-groomed and well-dressed kids with their parents in a steady relationship while they seem to earn quite enough that they afford dining out. In the case of the video’s designated protagonist, he has his own sturdy pair of headphones. It means the boy’s parents can afford giving him beautiful headphones with a portable CD player, and presumably the Staind CD he is listening to, which he probably only had to ask for.

At this point, let me just speak for myself because I now see how wrong I was for identifying with the video’s teenage characters at all. Like them, I felt like I wasn’t being taken seriously, like I was somehow worthless because nobody listened to me. Then, I watch this video again and realize I neglected one key point: I wasn’t even talking at all. Neither were the teenage characters in the video. So how were their parents supposed to know what they were feeling? How can they complain about not being listened to when they don’t even say anything? On that context, how could I?

Ten years later, I now realize I was wrong to feel that way. It was my fault my parents ever scolded me for my grades or lack of achievement; I didn’t accomplish as much as my capacity. It was my fault they didn’t know me; I didn’t talk with them. Things have been much better now. As an adult myself, I have enough practical imagination to realize it must be hard for them, too, to live for others more than their own selves. I love them very much, and I promise to love my children the same way someday. Somehow, I’ll make them understand me as much as I’ll try to understand them.