Trapping With My Dad

What were you like when I was 25
Hmm
Well, I was obsessed
When I was 25 or so
I probably weighed about 138 pounds
I smoked, like, a pack of cigarettes a day
I drank
Tremendous amount of alcohol
My friends were heavy drinkers
And most of them dropped out of school
By the time they were 15 or 16
Went off to work on the oil rigs
And it was a rough town
And we drank a lot
And I started when I was 14 and
I had a lot of bad habits
And I wasn't in great shape physically
I was also still intellectually obsessed
As I am now
That would have been in '85
But I decided around thеn
About '85, '84, something like that year
That I was rеally gonna try to get my act together
So I started doing that, I
First of all
I quit smoking
Although that took a long time
Because I eventually had to quit drinking too
In order to quit smoking
And I started working out
Started playing sports
Which I'd never done
I was a small kid
I've been skipped a grade
And I was small for my age
So sports were never really a domain of expertise for me
Although I skied and went

[Chorus]
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad, trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad, trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad, trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad

What kind of relationship do you have with you father?
Your real father
It's often ambivalent, right?
There's an element of him that encouraged you, hopefully
Because without the encouragement of your father, man
The world is a dismal place
It's very difficult to be a courageous person
Unless you have your father
In body and spirit behind you
'Cause if your father rejects you
Or doesn't form a relationship with you
It's as if the spirit of civilization has left you
Outside the walls as of little worth
It's very difficult for people to recover from that
So the father should be an encouraging force
But can be a tyrannical and crushing force
And that's a very difficult thing to get right
If you're my son
Then I should impose the highest standards
Of behavior on you
And I should always be judging what you're doing
And I should be judging it
With the aim of making the best of you come forward
But getting that balance exactly right is very difficult
It's like the mother who's too overprotective
"I'll never let anything happen to you"
It's like, huh, well, maybe you actually want
To have something happen to you
It's like, no, I'm gonna make you strong
So, any number of things can happen to you
And when you need some care, I'll be there
But otherwise, like, out into the world with you
That's the right attitude
And for the father, it's like
Get your bloody act together

[Chorus]
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad, trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad, trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad, trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad

I'm on your side
It's not because I want to destroy you
Or demean you
Or push you down in the dominance hierarchy
Because I want the best in you to emerge
So you need standards
It's like, what are you doing wasting your life?
There's way more than that to you
Get your act together and bring it out
And that's a message that people really wanna to hear
If they have any sense at all
And in general, they do wanna to hear it
One of the things you could do for young people
That no one's doing is talk to them about responsibility
Everyone talks to young people about rights
It's like, "We need our rights!"
It's like, oh, God, how many rights do you need?
You know, really, like
You have more privileges
Than any people who've ever lived anywhere
Well, it's so dull to hear it
It's so dull
It's so pathetic and demeaning
That you have to be protected and have your rights
There's a huge marketplace for responsibility
That's what you want to talk to young people about
It's like, life has meaning with responsibility
The more responsibility you take on
The more meaning your life has
And the higher degree of responsibility
That you agree voluntarily to try to bear
The richer your life will be
And no one's ever told that
And it's the case

[Chorus]
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad, trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad, trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad
Trapping with my dad, trapping with my dad
Trapping with my, trapping with my
Trapping with my dad

You have four kids, say
Well, that's plenty of responsibility
You're gonna have meaning
It's gonna be rough
You know, 'cause it's complicated
You have a complicated job
And you try to
Help the careers of the people around you
You try to solve tough problems
And aid suffering and do all of that
And it's like, it's weight
It's responsibility
There's glory in it
There's real glory in it
There's deep meaning in it
And young people are starving for that
Because no one ever tells them that
It's like
You're way more than you think, man
Stand up, do something difficult
Do something difficult and heroic
Burst out of your bonds
It's like
That's a good message
That's a necessary message
'Cause we have to be more than we are
Or because if we aren’t
We're not going to survive