BTS’ Paradise: to dream is scary
Life has become complicated and dreams have become bigger than what our life is. Whenever this world feels like it is too much for me to handle, BTS’ Paradise is one of the songs I listen to on repeat. This song is fitting to be part of their 2018 studio album, Love Yourself: Tear — which focuses on the daunting pain of loving yourself.
“Marathon marathon
Life’s long so take it slow
42.195
The end is filled with a paradise of dreams”
These lyrics remind me that life is like a marathon, and I feel like I’m catching my breath every time. Life is long, but it is also short. Like now, we don’t know when the time will freeze in uncertain possibilities. So, we need to take it slow because no matter how short or long it is to realize the beauty of it, we need to slow down to catch up on breathing.
“But the real world is
Different from what’s promised
We need to run, we need to step on it
If you shoot a flare
You don’t have a destination
There’s no sceneries at all
Until your breath comes up to your chin
You need to you need to”
Nobody really said this life is easy. But the longer I listen to BTS’ Paradise, I came to realize that life is simple; it’s unbothered. It’s our own society that made life out to be complicated and hard because everyone feels the need to catch up to others, to ourselves, to our minds. And the endless race will continue. We make our life based on what we perceive as an ideal lifestyle.
“It’s alright to stop
There’s no need to run without even knowing the reason
It’s alright to not have a dream
If you have moments where you feel happiness for a while
It’s alright to stop
Now we don’t run without knowing the destination
It’s alright to not have a dream
All the breaths you breathe are already in paradise”
It’s easier said than done — to stop. Honestly, we’re all afraid to know what would happen if we do stop, so we just keep going even if these dreams tire and exhaust us. Because in the pursuit of it, we have imagined what is at the end of it, but not when we stop, right? However, this song is like an assurance that’s telling us, “hey, stop when you can. We don’t know what the future holds, but it’ll be paradise.”
“We borrow dreams from others (Like a debt)
We learn that we need to become great (Like a light)
Your dream. Is actually a burden
If having a future is the only dream existing
Then what is the dream you had last night in your bed?
It’s alright if the name of the dream is different
Be it buying a laptop next month
Or just eating and sleeping
Not doing anything at all yet still having a lot of money
Who says a dream must be something grand?
Just become anybody
We deserve a life
Whatever big or small, you are you after all”
In RM’s verse, he starts by infering that “we borrow dreams from others” — something he has said before in his letter for ARMY back in 2013. I guess it could be true that we borrow dreams from others until they become our own. Looking to other people can help us realize who we wanted to become and, sometimes, who we didn’t want to be.
What pains me in this whole song is this line: “Your dream, is actually a burden.” At times of exhaustion and confusion, this is what it felt like for me; I feel like I’ve been carrying the world on my shoulders. How come the dream of becoming someone I wanted to be is a burden? I guess it’s because no matter how big or small our dreams are, no one really knows what we have to sacrifice for it — even ourselves.
“I don’t have a dream
To dream is sometimes scary
To just live like this
To survive like this is a small dream to me
To have a dream, to grasp a dream
To breathe is sometimes too much to handle
Saying this person’s living like this, that person’s living like that
The world’s hurling at me”
Suga’s verse has a pinch of reality as well: “To dream is sometimes scary.” It’s happy to dream, but pursuing it is what’s scary. And to not have a dream can be just as hard as having one. To dream is scary, but to have those dreams fulfilled can be worth more than all the scary things. This world has become complicated, which makes it hard for dreamers to be able to make their dreams a reality. This world has put a standard of what other people should be; it has transformed to become the survival of the fittest, which changes people in the process.
“Yeah
The world doesn’t have the right to swear
What is the way to dream a dream
Since they never taught us that
In the made-up dream, sleep-talk of tears
I wake you up from the nightmare for you
Now let’s try to smile every day, in that paradise”
No one really knows how to dream a dream. We learn in this verse that this life is a full cycle of trial and error. Even if I pick up advice from people, the decision is still left with me. And we’ll be asking ourselves how much do we trust ourselves in the process. But sometimes, at the end of it all, our greatest dream is just to be happy. With all the complications and hurdles, the winning and the losing, it’s happiness we all aim for in the end.
“Stop runnin’ for nothin’ my friend
Now stop that foolish race
Stop runnin’ for nothin’ my friend
All the breaths you breathe are already in paradise
Stop runnin’ for nothin’ my friend
You don’t need something like a dream that everyone dreams
Stop runnin’ for nothin’ my friend
Every language that makes you, is already in paradise”
Paradise is my safe place when I’m exhausted. When I just want to throw out my pen, highlighters, and the pile of papers to breathe in at the moment, I listen to Paradise. It’s an assurance that I needed when I felt like I wanted to just stop and leave everything behind, because dreams are exhausting. But I realize after replaying it a million times that I’d still do it. “Just become anybody, We deserve a life” — in my dreams, this is the anybody I want to become and this is the life I think I deserve in the future. Dreams are the most expensive thing in the world; we buy it with everything we’ve got, down to the last of our tears.
Life is hectic, but I also realize with BTS’ Paradise that no matter where you are in life — the beginning, middle, or even close to the finish line — it’s okay to stop, go back to zero, or start all over again. Sometimes the thought of wasting our efforts to get to where we are now in life is the only reason that we keep going. And we keep pushing for the wrong things because we don’t want to waste the efforts we put in. The big takeaway is that it’s okay to waste our efforts rather than to waste our lives with things that aren’t for us.
Start over in a friendship, get over a relationship, get that divorce, drop a course — it’s always okay to change our plans and our dreams like what Paradise has taught me. We are always more than all these decisions. Our dreams and our breaths are already in Paradise.
I wonder how BTS must’ve felt recording this in the peak of their success: Was the height scary and suffocating? Have they realized how scary dreams are? Regardless, I’m thankful a song like this exists: a promise of paradise every one deserves.
