First of all let me just say that before preparing for this article I had never listened to My Chemical Romance. Well, except for one time when I was drunk and we were all swapping nostalgic music videos, but I don’t really count that. So to me going in, MCR was just one of those melodramatic mascara bands that dotted the mid 2000s like the acne on their listener’s faces. But still, I was willing to give them a chance, so I slapped the Black Parade on my playlist right between Sufjan Stephens and the My Little Pony soundtrack (don’t ask) and we were off to the races.

The song opens with the lead singer (Gerard Way) telling us about how his dad once took him to a marching band show. That’s a nice outing. Unfortunately his dad also used the occasion to really push some intensely messianic expectations on him. To be more precise, his dad asked him to be ‘the savior of the broken, the beaten, and the damned.’ Now the only person who has literally saved the damned is Jesus Christ himself (pictured below), so maybe Mr. Way’s dad should sorta take it down a notch. And on top of all this his dad decides this is also a good time to remind his son that one day he’ll be dead and gone forever (at least that’s what I’m assuming the stuff about being a phantom means). All this amounts to a pretty heavy day for the young Gerard, since he has to come face to face with mortality and be asked to save the world all at once. At least there was a marching band I guess.

So the real question here is what is Gerry gonna do with all this? And the answer comes when the song picks up a bit. Here we find the older Gerard struggling with all these expectations and the death of his father. There’s ‘bodies in the streets’ and his dreams are decimated and he wishes he could just paint it all black. In the midst of all this all he can do is ‘carry on.’ Carry on his father’s memory and his father’s expectations, even if he knows he’s not really living up to them.

But wait, there’s more!

After carrying on for a while, it seems our singer has a change of heart. Now he decides he’s NOT a hero, NOT a savior of humanity. Instead he’s just a man, just a boy. And while he’s totally down with cheering for the broken, he’s also realized that he’s a broken person too. And you know what? That’s ok. In fact, if you’re one of the ‘disappointed faces of his peers’ he just ‘could not care at all.’

Of course, right after this he goes back to carrying on for his father, but at this point we can see the basic conflict of the song. Gerry wants to accept his own nature as a flawed human being, but at the same time he’s got all these heavy expectations put on him by the world around him. He’s torn between either accepting the reality of his brokenness or pushing forward to what he (and his father) thinks he should be.

And that, my friends, is for many philosophers the core conflict of human nature. Do we accept the world as it is, or do we fight to change it? If you look around, you’ll see that basically everyone has an opinion on this, whether they know it or not. I’m sure we all know some of those lazy farts who just never seem to get excited or upset about anything and always appear to be almost half asleep. These people are taking the Buddhist, Stoic line on things, far on the acceptance side of the spectrum. And then there’s those jerks who wake you up at 4am to go on a crazy hike just so you can see the sun rise – literally the same thing it has done every day since the creation of the earth. These nutjobs are the fighters and strivers among us, the Nietzsches and John Stuart Mills.

But this isn’t just a matter of personality. There are real arguments as to why one side or the other is the actually correct way to live, and real arguments against each as well. For example, pushing to be your best might sound really wonderful. Your mom and dad probably told you to do that (Gerard Way’s dad certainly did). But you know who else was trying to be their best? Hitler. Stalin. Virtually every villain in every story. ‘Being your best’ is really just code for pushing your own specific vision of ‘best’ on the world, and is arguably the root of all evils. Just imagine how you feel when your friend wakes you up at 4am for that hike – I bet you’re not 100% happy. Your friend, however, could not care less; they’re gonna be their best and you know what? You’re gonna be your best too, whether you like it or not. But what’s gonna happen when you do get to the top of the mountain? There’s just gonna be another one right after it, ready and waiting. Ultimately, being your best is a constant and meaningless struggle to aggressively imposing your will on the world. Failure is punished, and success is rewarded with more work. What a wonderful existence.

Much better would be just accept the world as it is and let it be. Of course, the standard criticism of this stance is that these folks just never get anything done. Now, not to show my hand too much, but I tend to side with the acceptance crew. So let me take a second to throw down for them in this little philosophical street fight we’re having here. The acceptors and allowers of the world aren’t getting anything done, sure, but actually nothing needs to get done. Doing things is about solving problems, but accepting the problematic situation is the most easy, elegant, and universal solution to any and all problems. So let’s just do that!

In reality, things are never this simple, and even accepting the world as it is can take enormous effort – Buddha made it his life’s work, after all. And if we’re struggling to accept… well then how are we really any different from the strivers and fighters? 

This same struggle is what’s going on in ‘The Black Parade.’ Our man Gerard Way has had some dark times, and some real failures in his past. He wants to accept these and find peace. But his father’s absurd expectations make it impossible for him to really accept himself as a flawed human being. So, like all of us, he’s torn. Should he fight to realize the huge ambitions of his family and his youth? Or should he fight to find peace with who he is?

At the end of the day, Gerard Way, like the rest of us, can’t just lay down and accept things with a flip of a switch. Nor can he immediately and instantly realize his grandiose goals. Both of these take real work. But whether we work toward a life of peaceful acceptance or a life of individual achievement can define our entire personalities, and indeed our entire lives. It’s a decision worth making consciously and deliberately.