In It For The Kicks?

This falls under the category of "Something I Found While Looking For Something Else".

While I certainly have been aware of the song "Kicks" by Paul Revere & the Raiders for almost my whole life, the Truth in the lyric only recently jumped out at me. This popular 1960's rock group certainly went against the "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out" tide when they sang...

Girl, you thought you found the answer

On that magic carpet ride last night

But when you wake up in the mornin'

The world still gets you uptight

Well, there's nothin' that you ain't tried

To fill the emptiness inside

But when you come back down, girl

Still ain't feelin' right

And don't it seem like

Kicks just keep gettin' harder to find

And all your kicks ain't bringin' you peace of mind

Before you find out it's too late, girl

You better get straight

No, but not with kicks

You just need help, girl

Well you think you're gonna find yourself

A little piece of paradise

But it ain't happened yet

So girl, you better think twice

Don't you see, no matter what you do

You'll never run away from you

And if you keep on runnin'

You'll have to pay the price

And don't it seem like

Kicks just keep gettin' harder to find

And all your kicks ain't bringin' you peace of mind

Before you find out it's too late, girl

You better get straight

No, you don't need kicks

To help you face the world each day

That road goes nowhere

I'm gonna help you find yourself another way

Kicks just keep gettin' harder to find

(Oh, you don't need kicks, girl)

And all your kicks ain't bringin' you peace of mind

(You just need help, girl)

Before you find out it's too late, girl

You better get straight

https://youtu.be/84L7wRSg2Vk

The anti-drug message is certainly clear, but there are other truths that deserve some attention:

• That magic carpet ride last night  -  This song appeared two years before Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride", so...so there.
• Well, there's nothin' that you ain't tried to fill the emptiness inside  -  Reminds me just a bit of words credited to Pascal (wrongly): There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every [person]. While the "quote" is a paraphrase of something Pascal wrote, I think the concept is true. We seem to have been created with a desire for a relationship with our creator that we will continually try to satisfy by any available means until we get the real thing.
• Don't you see, no matter what you do, you'll never run away from you  -  A physical truth, to be sure, but here's a spiritual application: If you're going from church to church, never committing to any particular group because you're looking for the perfect church...give it up. Even if you find "the perfect church," that will change the minute you step through the doors.

Truth is...the first thing I thought of when I started getting serious about the song "Kicks" was this story told by Rich Mullins (minutes 14:05-15:21 of a lecture posted on You Tube):

A very interesting thing happened in Witchita, Kansas. A bunch of people who had been going to my church a few years went over to visit The Vineyard. And after they started visiting The Vineyard, they decided to join The Vineyard, so they went up and, you know went forward and the pastor said, "Why do you want to join our church?" And they said, "Well, because your worship is just so exciting to us!" And you know what the pastor of The Vinyard said? He said, "Go back to your old church. We don't really particularly need you in this congregation. Because this is what will happen. You used to go to the church where you've been going about three or four years because you got a buzz out of it. So suddenly, you come to visit our church and we give you a better buzz. So you decide that, suddenly, you no longer want to be faithful to the church where you're a member...suddenly you're going to a church that gives you a better buzz. You know what's gonna happen is that you're gonna get used to the way we do our worship service here and then you're not going to get the buzz out of it and you'll go seek out another church. You'll end up being the member of about 50 dozen churches by the time you're fifty...and you won't have helped anybody. And you won't have grown. Because you will have gone from one goosebump feeling to another.