Music

Slow Down, You Crazy Child

A College Guy’s Reflection on Contentment à la Billy Joel’s “Vienna”

Micah Gilmer / 8.11.23

Just over two weeks ago, I turned 19 … The old One-Nine … The last ‘teen’ of the teens … The final, uhh … The year of the —

Ok, fine. There’s really nothing special about turning 19. In fact, it’s rather boring: I’ve already passed the benchmark of becoming an adult, but I haven’t yet reached 21, where the real fun can begin (i.e., going to the DMV and turning my Virginia driver’s license from vertical to horizontal — what a rush!).

I’ve realized that as certain stages of life pass by, it’s easy to never feel satisfied with the present stage. Oh, you’re in high school? Just wait for college, because that’s when school and your social life really ramp up. College? Wait until you get into the real world, a desolate wasteland of depression and taxes. Single? Just wait until you get married and all the crazy that your spouse brings. Then buy a house; have kids; be an empty-nester; have grandkids …

Each new stage of life — each path a person takes — leads to its own complications, desires, arrogances, regrets, and all other sorts of stuff. All these stages of life are wonderful blessings, so I’m told. But oftentimes, we don’t see these blessings in the present; life just seems to be comprised of the next stage, and not this stage. By focusing on what’s next, we embrace this general outlook: Wherever you are in your life now, you will never be enough.

So I’m 19 now. When I compare my life to those around me — to friends, parents, professors, coworkers — I can easily feel inadequate. I think that I have no right to write about my stage of life, because what on earth do I know?

But Billy Joel’s pretty old, and he knows stuff about life, right? He deeply understands the issue of trying to feel content in the present. It’s a theme that echoes across his musical career, from his hit title track “Piano Man” — featuring the bartender John, who wishes he could be a movie star if he could only “get out of this place” — to “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” — with Joel rejecting criticism for living life in the present on his terms (“What’s the matter with the car I’m driving?” “Can’t you tell that it’s out of style?”). Songs like “The Entertainer,” “Summer, Highland Falls,” “Pressure,” and “I Go to Extremes” all explore the feeling further. Even after his songwriting days were over, he still emphasized the struggle in a 2008 article in the New York Times: “I seek contentment. I wish I was less discontent.” Well, don’t we all? And how are we to deal with this problem that projects itself throughout every stage of life we face?

***

Slow down, you crazy child

You’re so ambitious for a juvenile

But then if you’re so smart

Tell me why are you still so afraid?

I graduated high school early in 2021. I didn’t have a graduation ceremony or anything, just the lifted weight of not having to go through another year of high school. My friends and family thought I was mature and smart enough to go to college, so I promptly packed my bags and headed off to the unknown.

I excelled in my classes there, leading grammar study groups comprised mostly of juniors and seniors. I worked hard to make my professors and parents proud. But there were always these thoughts of insufficiency: What about your finances? You don’t have a job yet. All your other friends have work studies or part-time jobs. Even when I did get a gig as an English tutor, I still wasn’t making half as much as everybody else.

Last summer was horrible. I felt terrible for not having a job, but I was so anxious about being inadequate that I didn’t apply for any jobs. It was depressing — crippling, even — to hear everyone around me tell me I’m “all that and a bag of chips,” when I just felt like a failure.

If they could just see into my mind right now… If they could see the anxiety pressing down on me, making me feel like I’m not enough in their eyes. This “bag of chips” has been opened from the bottom, and all the chips now lay crushed and sprinkled across the floor.

***

Where’s the fire, what’s the hurry about?

You’d better cool it off before you burn it out

You’ve got so much to do and only

So many hours in a day

Other people’s approval has never made me content. Perhaps it has seemed to make me content at times, but I would argue that contentment requires more steadiness — more consistency — than the fleeting approval of friends and family, of professors and bosses. I don’t mean that their approval is fickle; I mean that what work I give to them will soon be forgotten, and then I’ll have to work on something new to reignite that spark of approval. Again, Joel understands the plight well. As he sings in “The Entertainer,” “But I know the game, you’ll forget my name / And I won’t be here in another year / If I don’t stay on the charts.”

But you know that when the truth is told

That you can get what you want

Or you can just get old

You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through

And if people forget your work that fast, is working for contentment really an answer that consistently satisfies?

When will you realize

Vienna waits for you?

***

At the end of last summer, I thought adding another degree to my resume would show that I’m not just wasting my time. If I wasn’t going to get a job, at least I could work harder than my peers in school so my job prospects would be better once I left college. I felt like I needed to prove that not only could I succeed in my classes, but I could find contentment in my work by doing extra.

So (for no sound reason), I became a double major.

Slow down, you’re doing fine

You can’t be everything you want to be

Before your time

Although it’s so romantic on the borderline tonight

Would you believe that the constant go-go-go made me miserably insecure? Who knew. I became, also, more prideful. Even the title of the new major sounded pretentious:

“So, what’s your major?”

“Oh, well, I’m majoring in writing, and I just added another major in theology and apologetics with a cognate in writing and literature,” I’d say. It’s a wonder I wasn’t out of breath each time I said it. But it was a mouthful I was happy to blabber on about over and over again, because now I was enough.

Right?

I had planned it all out to get my double major in only 4 years. Sure, there’d be some 18-credit semesters; and sure, I wasn’t super gung-ho about all the new classes I’d need to take; and sure, it felt like far too much to take on; but at least now I was enough.

***

Billy Joel once visited his father in Vienna, where he found the inspiration for the song:

I’m walking around this town and I see this old lady. She must have been about 90 years old and she is sweeping the street. I say to my father, “What’s this nice old lady doing sweeping the street?” He says, “She’s got a job, she feels useful, she’s happy, she’s making the street clean, she’s not put out to pasture.” … In a lot of these older places in the world, they [the people in Vienna] value their older people and their older people feel they can still be a part of the community and I thought, “This is a terrific idea — that old people are useful — and that means I don’t have to worry so much about getting old because I can still have a use in this world in my old age.” I thought, ‘Vienna waits for you…’

***

Paul’s letters to Timothy are filled with lots of information for Timothy to take care of the church. Lots of stuff on order and being a good servant of Christ and fighting the good fight of faith. Timothy was young. Young enough that Paul had to encourage him that he was alright to be so young, that he was leading his flock well: “Let no one despise you for your youth” (1 Tim. 4:12). I’d bet Timothy felt inadequate and discontent, hearing the words of the Ephesian church spreading about him: Sure, he’s a good leader with a good faith and a good heart, but don’t you think he’s just a little too young?

Too bad but it’s the life you lead

You’re so ahead of yourself

That you forgot what you need

Though you can see when you’re wrong

You know you can’t always see when you’re right

Whether Timothy himself struggled with the go-go-go mindset or his church in Ephesus did — probably both — Paul makes sure to add helpful insight on the healthy mind of a righteous person. He warns Timothy about the type of people who disregard the teachings of Christ — “people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain” (1 Tim. 6:5).

You got your passion, you got your pride

But don’t you know that only fools are satisfied?

Dream on, but don’t imagine they’ll all come true

When will you realize

Vienna waits for you?

“But,” Paul continues, “godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Tim. 6:6-8).

Food and clothing? That’s it?

Paul, my good man. Paul, my fine fellow: When you say food, you mean “whatever feeds our desires to live comfortably (like entertainment, work, and approval),” right? And by clothing, you obviously mean “both the physical and the metaphorical clothing — accessories included — that covers our bodies with what’s stylish and what fits well,” right?

Paul’s response? “Nah. Here’s a burrito and some pants. The rest’s taken care of.”

***

Slow down, you crazy child

And take the phone off the hook

And disappear for a while

It’s alright, you can afford to lose a day or two

I dropped my double major and adjusted my schedule to ease my credit workload. My semester of the double major wasn’t in vain: I wouldn’t have wanted to get a biblical languages minor had Greek not been a requirement on my second degree. I realized also that I am able to graduate in 3 years, which is an incredible weight lifted, both financially and academically. And once I had dropped the extra major (surprise, surprise!) I was offered a copyediting job at the student-run newspaper, resolving many of my financial fears. I found more time for my friends and roommates, more confidence in my work. I found peace, the comforting voice that whispers, Slow down, My crazy child. For you are, and will always be, enough in My eyes.

Why don’t you realize

Vienna waits for you?

For me, the contentment of Vienna has always been something I’ve yearned for. Billy Joel does such an excellent job conceptualizing it, too: Lyrically, “Vienna” is peace; melodically, it’s paradise. Mix the two together and I’m reminded of all the blessings about my life that I so quickly forget because of my discontent with this stage of life.

I am thankful when I consider the perfection of Vienna. The great gain of godliness with contentment. The easy yoke, the light burden. The gift of pants and burritos, the forgiveness of sins, and everything else I’ll ever need.