We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here ~ Malinda Words

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 207th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

The popular romcom ‘When Harry met Sally’ ends a classic recognition and declaration of love with the traditional song heralding the new year being played in the background. Harry, played by Billy Crystal, and Sally, played by Meg Ryan briefly discuss the meaning of the song, ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Sally concludes, ‘anyway, it’s about old friends.’ And they kiss.

I watched an episode of the television series ‘The Crown’ with my old friend Dhammika Amarakoon a short while ago where Lord Mountbatten, having been sacked as Chief of the Defence Staff by the Harold Wilson administration, leaves his office, his entire staff singing ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ a traditional Scottish song transcribed or edited by the poet Robert Burns and which speaks of ‘times long ago.’

Dhammika paused the video and related an incident that had taken place at the Great Circle, a residential treatment facility for children and teens struggling with mental health issues where he used to work. Apparently it was a tradition to sing this song whenever a child leaves having completed treatment.

On one such occasion, while everyone sang ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ one teenager had heartily sung along, but to lyrics of his own. He had just kept repeating the line, ‘we’re here because we’re here.’

For those unfamiliar with the most popular version of the song, this is how it goes:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

So the young boy sang this way:

We’re here because we're here
because we’re here because we’re here
We’re here because we're here
because we're here because we’re here.

It's an easy song for transposition of alternative lyrics. When Australia won the Cricket World Cup in 1999 defeating Pakistan in the final and Shane Warne was declared Man of the Match for his 4 for 33 off 9 overs, Australian supporters sang the same song. They didn’t say ‘we’re here because we’re here.’ They didn’t sing Auld Lang Syne. They simply replaced all lyrics with ‘Shane Warne:’ Shane Warne Shane Warne Shane Warne Shane Warne etc etc.

The young boy was philosophical. Utterly. A fairly common perception among residents, despite a well thought out and probably tried and tested system of screening, is that they should not be there. Being there ‘because they happen to be there,’ is essentially a contention that there’s no rhyme or reason for them to be there in the first place.

We often see this. There are successful people who attribute their achievements to their own initiative, hard work and determination. They may mention a few individuals who helped them along, but by and large go along with ‘I did it my way,’ and ‘I am self-made.’ When things don’t work out, it’s someone else’s fault. Circumstances. Envy on the part of some detractor. Whatever. Not ‘I.’

Didn’t plan to get there. Don’t know how they ended up where they are. They are there because, well, they are there. That’s it.

On the other hand, who among us lives in a land we wanted to be citizens of or are totally and absolutely happy with how things are? We can never be absolute masters of our fate, we are never the captains of our souls, to borrow from ‘Invictus’ by William Ernest Henley.

‘Men (sic) make their history but not in the circumstances of their choice,’ said Karl Marx. Pierre Bourdieu offered a more poetic though convoluted observation about structure and agency when he spoke of structuring structures and structured structures.

The young man privileged, one might argue, an overarching structure. Understandable considering that he had little or no agency in that facility where he was being treated for behaviour considered aberrant, essentially. He was absolutely correct in this sense: he was there because he was there, as far as he could tell. The fellow resident was leaving, but he remained and would continue to remain because, well, he was there because he was there, unlike Mountbatten in whose case we all know much of the how and why or in the case of Harry and Sally thanks to a clever screenplay.

Who among us have not felt similar alienation, similar helplessness, a similar sense of being where we are because that’s where we are and we are unable to fathom how we got there and why?

We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here! Things don’t play out as they can be made to in a screenplay with Auld Lang Syne playing in the background and a happily-ever-after to look forward to. We might as well write our own lyrics and transcribe our version of the conditions of our existence to a happy tune, like that of Auld Lang Syne.

28 August 2023

We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here

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