In 1968, when singer and songwriter Paul Anka was on holiday in the south of France, he heard a song that touched him. He was so moved by it that he traveled to Paris and negotiated the rights for ownership.
Sometime later, he was in Florida having dinner with Frank Sinatra and “a couple of Mob guys,” during which Sinatra said, “I’m quitting the business. I’m sick of it; I’m getting the hell out.” That’s when the inspiration struck Anka to adapt the song for his friend. It was titled My Way, and Sinatra’s version was a major success on the charts.
The lyrics are perfect for our purpose, and the stage is ominously set with the first lines: “And now, the end is near/ And so I face the final curtain.” It’s a haunting tune with lyrics that poignantly recount Sinatra’s hardscrabble life. He conveys that although he has a few regrets, they were “too few to mention,” and in the third verse, he wistfully sings that he “laughed and cried,” and that he had “my share of losing.” He continues with the immodest line, “…may I say, not in a shy way…”.
The final verse captures Sinatra’s quintessential defiance, which so tellingly characterized his life.
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way.
We turn now to Sinatra’s daughter, Tina (b. 1948), who revealed that her father never liked the song. “He always thought that song was self-serving and self-indulgent,” which has the clear ring of truth. Moreover, this insight could be applied to nearly the entire entertainment industry’s output beginning in the sixties. We often think of that era as one of rebellion, but it was also the start of a blinkered self-absorption that lost its moral bearing, which tangentially, but importantly, accelerated the trend of those abdicating religious belief.
Because our secularists smugly assure us that death results in inky blackness, when the “final curtain” approaches, consistent with our cultural inclinations, it naturally gives us pause. Indeed, in our largely God-less age, when the self is the sole arbiter of our mortal life—which this lyric argues—it becomes a spiritual cannibal. To offset this nihilistic vision, we begin by asking what constitutes the notion of “final.” Is it the end, or just a spiritually veiled beginning?
As we enter the final chapter of our lives, we may find ourselves suffocating with the fear of death, what Shakespeare called the “undiscovered country, from whose bourn/ No traveler returns.” Indeed, as we contemplate being on our deathbed, we tremble at the thought of saying our final goodbye and the horrid prospect of never seeing our loved ones again. However, if we look beyond those trepidations, we can recall the comforting assertion that God makes in Hebrews: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Glimpsing through the mortal gauze and into the spiritual world, it becomes apparent that, paradoxically, it is the body that is the impediment to our understanding. That lures us into St. Paul’s passionate pleading: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this mortal body?” (Romans 7:24-25)
The answer immediately follows, which creates a quandary:
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin.
This establishes the dichotomy of the mind—which can be trained to serve God’s law—and its insidious enemy, the body, which we know is a slave to sin:
Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation:
The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41)
The body is thereby implicated in the spiritual crime of mortality, and bringing it full circle we have answered the question in the final verse (viz., “For what is a man, what has he got?/ If not himself, then he has naught…”): man has a body which is ensouled, which is to say it is endowed with a soul. That means the body is not merely a receptacle for the soul, but rather God has provided it with a soul.
The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body, made of matter, becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 365)
This takes us to the final lines of that verse. As we will see, when viewed through a scriptural lens, the meaning is profoundly changed.
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
I did it my way.
Expressing things of importance in our lives that we feel, versus what we think, is how we begin the first chapter of a book freighted with self-pity and recriminations for slights, real or imagined. Moreover, as we know, our rightful position when we pray is on our knees. It demonstrates obeisance to our Lord and a respect borne of scriptural fear. In truth, the lyrics of the entire song project a willfulness and spiritual recalcitrance, reflecting a man without a scintilla of humility, who would neither kneel nor pray.
The record may show that Sinatra “took the blows,” but if he were honest, it was not he alone who sustained the injuries. When we suffer life’s blows, in whatever form they may take, we know that Christ suffered far more. Therefore, our pain, whether physical or emotional, is not, if you will, for naught, because there is salvific value in our suffering, and every blow we take, regardless of its magnitude, is one that our Lord took first, for our sins. And, as the Resurrection assures us, as a result, we have the supreme gift: the promise of eternal salvation.
Those determined to live life “my way” begin by entering a dark spiritual tunnel with hubris as their guide, and their families and friends are casualties—emotional and at times, physical—who are, ironically, the ones who also “take the blows.”
To avoid this unholy path, which leads to spiritual misery, we must anesthetize the ego with the grace of humility. The Lord’s blessings are guaranteed to follow, as we welcome the Holy Spirit into our soul, who will show us the real way to happiness and peace.
Philip E. Mella