One thing is certain: A Question of Balance was recorded with a minimum of studio tricks so that the Moodies could perform the songs in concert. As to the equally important issue regarding what the album was all about, three of the band members appeared to have conflicting interpretations (Higher & Higher Issue 33):

Justin Hayward: “On the first side, we were asking ourselves the question, and on the second side, we are starting to answer it. Looking for the answers will keep us going for a long time.”

Graeme Edge: “We very much wanted to reflect what the title says: that maintaining yourself is a question of balance.”

Mike Pinder: “We all wanted to just express ourselves. The whole idea of individual growth and being able to transfer that into our music.”

Those responses aren’t particularly helpful. The question-answer side structure is blown early in the album, Graeme’s emphasis on self-care only applies to two or three songs, and Pinder’s comments could apply to any of their albums released to date. It is true that the Moodies did pose a few questions and gave a few answers, but their thematic explanations are out of sync with Phil Travers’ band-approved cover art, which tells us that A Question of Balance was an attempt to send a wake-up call to the human race that the world was under serious threats in the form of pollution, greedy capitalists (the man with the cigar), endless wars and the continuing possibility of nuclear armageddon. In the H&H issue, Travers identified the targets of the doomsday message: “The people on the sleeve are actually just sitting there, on holiday, basking in the sunshine with presumably not a care in the world. They just don’t notice what’s coming up at them and probably won’t until it’s too late. It’s just a symbolic way of putting over what most of us do—we bury our heads until it’s too late.” While I firmly believe that the cover best describes the overall concept, the implementation of that theme is a bit spotty, with some songs wandering off in other directions.

The Moodies sounded that alarm bell in 1970. Substitute “climate change” for pollution, “narcissistic nutcake tech bros and billionaires” for greedy capitalists, and leave the endless wars, the threat of nuclear armageddon, and the ostriches in place, and voilá, welcome to 2025. In 1970, the Doomsday Clock was set to 10 minutes before midnight; now it’s down to 89 seconds. Given the continuing spread of authoritarianism and the aggressive posture adopted by the United States, I fully expect the clock to move even closer to midnight next year.

When asked about the opening track, Justin made an interesting observation that applies to the entire album: “After a decade of peace and love, it still seemed we hadn’t made a difference in 1970.” In contrast to their previous works, A Question of Balance finds the Moodies spending more time and effort pointing out the world’s problems while continuing their quest to get the blind to see that they had a role to play in making the world a better place.

*****

Side One

“Question” (Hayward): Note: This was our wedding song, and I wrote about the experience in the post Full Circle – End of the Honeymoon Series. As that tiny contribution to literature only covered what the song meant to two human beings, it falls far short of a critical analysis. I will now give the song the full altrockchick treatment it so richly deserves.

When Jeb Wright asked Justin about “Question” in an interview on Classic Rock Revisited, the composer explained, “That was a song written under pressure. There was a Moody session set at Decca studios on a Saturday. At midnight that Friday I still didn’t have anything for the session the next day. I had parts of two songs that were in the same key but were vastly different. About four o’clock in the morning I thought, ‘Oh shit, all I can do is try to put them together and make them work, somehow.’ I took it into the studio the next morning and played it to the guys and they said, ‘That’s great!’ They never even thought about it being two songs.” Sharing the same key made the transition a piece of cake, and the differing dynamic and rhythmic variations in the two songs fit the lyrics perfectly: loud-and-fast to express a sense of urgency regarding the state of the world, slow-and-soft when it was time to reduce the scope from the general to the personal and engage in self-reflection.

The Moodies waste no time in declaring an emergency with one of the most explosive opening passages on record. Justin’s hypersonic-speed strumming is quickly followed by Pinder’s rising pair of “ta-da moments” in the form of rising upward orchestral blasts from the mellotron that made me jump the first time I heard it as a little girl. After a brief passage of wrist-snapping strumming and a third orchestral blast, Graeme Edge enters with a steady beat while the mellotron adds a touch of deep, dark background. Shortly after Justin emerges to deliver a healthy “ah-ah-ah,” what comes next is a vital contribution to the arrangement of the loud-and-fast passages—John Lodge’s bass run. The sequence involves a chord pattern of C dim/G7sus/C, and because Justin is using open C tuning, he plays the chord pattern on the higher strings, making it difficult for the listener to hear and feel the bluesy dissonance of the C dim chord that reflects the bitter tone of the lyrics. With Lodge playing the key notes of the chord pattern on the bass, that problem is solved just in time for Justin’s vocal.

Warning to guitarists: if you attempt to play the chords at the proper speed using standard tuning, you will likely wind up needing orthopedic surgery. Lucky for you, a guy with the delightful handle Ivor Sorefingers recorded a four-part lesson on how to play “Question,” including instructions for tuning and step-by-step chording.

Just before Justin begins his vocal, the arrangement flips to bare bones with the guitarist strumming away while Lodge supports him on bass. Justin’s lyrics on To Our Children’s Children’s Children leaned strongly towards the opaque, but here his anger regarding the state of the world is both genuine and well-translated into coherent, meaningful lyrics. “I got very angry one night listening to the news about the war in Vietnam. The only reason to have a war to me is to do with starvation . . . people fighting for their lives. But just for a bit of territory, a bit of land somewhere, was stupid. In my own naive way, I put a lot of those feelings into ‘Question’.” (The Music Aficionado)

Why do we never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions about hate and death and war?
‘Cause when we stop and look around us, there is nothing that we need
In a world of persecution that is burning in its greed

Why do we never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door?
Because the truth, it’s hard to swallow, that’s what the war of love is for

Graeme Edge’s riff following the opening line mimics that “knocking at the door,” one of his most memorable contributions on the kit. Justin’s disgust with mealy-mouthed politicians who foment hate, resort to war, and choose spin over truthfulness while giving us “nothing that we need” is palpable and quite stirring. The truth regarding the Vietnam War is hard to swallow, as LBJ continued the war because he didn’t want to be remembered as the president who lost Vietnam and was willing to trade American lives in an insane and misguided attempt to secure his legacy.

Anger spent, the music softens as Justin engages in reflection via a one-sided conversation with his partner that indicates he is searching for refuge from a world gone mad in a loving relationship. The single was released a couple of months before the album, so Justin would have been twenty-three when he composed the song. The early twenties are often a difficult period for most people (self included) because at that age we are searching for something, but we’re uncertain about what it is we’re looking for and unsure of ourselves. In Justin’s case, he is resuming the search after ending another relationship, and the wounds are still fresh:

It’s not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me
It’s more the way that you mean it
When you tell me what will be

And when you stop and think about it
You won’t believe it’s true
That all the love you’ve been giving
Has all been meant for you

I’m looking for someone to change my life
I’m looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it’s done to me
To lose the the love I knew could safely lead me through

Describing his end goal as a “miracle” confirms that his self-confidence has been damaged and that he views the quest for refuge in a relationship as a difficult undertaking. The passage can also be interpreted as Justin communicating to his partner that he is “damaged goods,” for though he is appreciative of his new partner’s support, he’s not sure that he’s ready to give what she needs in return.

In the next passage, he settles down and reminds himself of the purpose behind the quest: finding the woman who can provide him with refuge while making sure she receives refuge in return. He then falls prey to the latent insecurity and confusion experienced by many a twenty-something, but in the extended version of the chorus, he tries to shake off his melancholy, singing with every bit of passion he can muster to make his dream of a meaningful relationship come true:

Between the silence of the mountains
And the crashing of the sea
There lies a land I once lived in
And she’s waiting there for me

But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose

I’m looking for someone to change my life
I’m looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it’s done to me
To lose the love I knew could safely lead me to
The land that I once knew
To learn as we grow old the secrets of our souls

In the repetition of the verse that began the reflective part of the song, Justin adds one very important word that indicates his realization that the woman he has been looking for is right there beside him:

It’s not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me
It’s more the way you really mean it
When you tell me what will be

I would rank the reflective passage as one of the most beautiful and emotive moments in popular music history. The melody is exceptionally beautiful, and the dynamic changes in Justin’s voice evoke a range of conflicting emotions that tug at the heartstrings. The simple and lovely arrangement of strummed 12-string guitar and voice in the opening lines is just as compelling as the explosive opener, and when bass, drums and mellotron make their appearance in sync with Justin’s more assertive vocal, I feel tingles up and down my spine.

Having gained some confidence through reflection, Justin performs the reprise of the opener with greater enthusiasm for the battle ahead: the war between love and hate. If the people on Earth today could replicate one-half of Justin’s determination to make sure that love will win in the end, we might be able to move that Doomsday Clock closer to zero.

Hmm. It seems that Justin asked the question and found the answer, weakening his question-and-answer side theory. Let’s see what Mike Pinder has to say about it.

“How Is It (We Are Here)” (Pinder): Yep, you can forget about the question-and-answer side theory. Mike passes the first hurdle by asking not one but two vital questions, then makes a brief side stop at Fort Knox to point out the absurdity of digging for gold just to hide it in underground bunkers.

How is it we are here, on this path we walk?
In this world of pointless fear filled with empty talk
Descending from the ape as scientist-priests all think
Will they save us in the end?
We’re trembling on the brink

Men’s mighty mine-machines digging in the ground
Stealing rare minerals where they can be found
Concrete caves with iron doors bury it again
While a starving, frightened world fills the sea with grain

Then he completely blows Justin’s theory to smithereens by providing an answer on side one: protect Mother Nature.

Her love is like a fire burning inside
Her love is so much higher, it can’t be denied
She sends us her glory
It’s always been there
Her love’s all around us
It’s there for you and me to share

I agree with the sentiments, but really, this isn’t much of a song, as the melody goes in one ear and out the other. Then again, any song that followed “Question” would have paled in comparison.

“And the Tide Rushes In” (Thomas) While his bandmates were worrying about the world going to hell in a handbasket, Ray had more pressing matters to deal with on the home front:

“And the Tide Rushes In” was recorded after a big argument with my ex-wife. And I say, ‘You keep looking for someone to tell your troubles to, I’ll sit down and lend an ear, yet I hear nothing new.’ Just complaining, then the tide rushes in and washes my castle away.”

Except for the collaboration with Edge on “The Balance,” this was Ray’s only composition on the album, which is understandable given the circumstances. The question posed by the song is “How can I save a failing relationship?” but Ray is unable to come up with an answer in the song or anywhere on side two. Though the song is incompatible with the theme, Ray’s vocal is outstanding, combining feelings of loss with genuine sadness. The only problem I have with the arrangement is that the mellotron overwhelms Ray’s voice on the chorus, disrupting the flow at a critical moment in the narrative.

“Don’t You Feel Small?” (Edge): An excellent question indeed! Most of us feel helpless when facing problems that seem too big to solve, and in democracies, the average person feels that their input is limited to a single vote or a modest donation. In H&H 33, Graeme shared an interesting take on the feeling of helplessness at the center of the song: “It started basically as a bit of a go about ecology, and then I saw in it a lot of things the way people seem to be allowing themselves to be made to feel very insignificant by establishment things.” Had he not been murdered two years earlier, Bobby Kennedy would have agreed with him:

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice. He sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance.

The four voices backed by a whisper echo that sentiment in the song’s most important verse: if you’re going to build a current, it starts with you:

Time is now to spread your voice
Time to come, there’ll be no choice
Why do you feel small? It happens to us all

While I generally like the arrangement with its Latin-tinged syncopation, well-executed vocal mixture, and Ray’s contributions on the flute, the sudden shift to rock ‘n’ roll in the middle of the song feels out of place, and wasting all that energy on a measly two lines seems . . . out of balance.

“Tortoise and the Hare” (Lodge): While this song may seem like an odd fit for the album, it does serve as a different sort of wake-up call: one directed at the band. “It was really a sort of analogy, really, of the Moody Blues. You know, everyone else was racing away. We were just trying to say, ‘If we just keep on going [with] exactly what we really believe, we’re going to last and [beat out] everyone’.” (H&H13) Having realized that their efforts to enlighten the audience hadn’t moved the needle all that much, Lodge encourages his mates to stay the course:

You know he’s moving fast,
Be he’s still going slow,
He’s ahead in the race,
And there is not far to go,
And your load is so heavy
And your legs want to rest.
It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right

Of course, the problem with the song is that without that quote from H&H, listeners would never understand why the Moodies treated them to one of Aesop’s fables and would have had no idea what John was going on about.

Side Two

“It’s Up to You” (Hayward): Justin explained the inspiration for the song in an interview with Rock Cellar Magazine, but gave few hints as to its meaning: “That’s my song.  I like the guitar feel on it, and I like the phrase, the idea. I built it around that. It was about a love affair I was in at the time. I’d not long had the Red Gibson 335 and was really enjoying it. The truth in a song lies in how listeners put their own meaning into it—in how a listener or a reader interprets it, what they get out of it themselves and what they can bring to it.” Tom Verlaine of Television took a similar approach to lyrical interpretation, and while it’s true that listeners often interpret a song through their own lenses, that approach can sometimes lead to an interpretation that has nothing to do with the song but plenty to do with the interpreter’s personal agenda. Here’s how Mike Pinder “interpreted” “It’s Up to You.”

“It’s Up to You” is very much a starker reality that people still need to realize, that it’s up to the individual to make anything better, whether it be a political vote or in conserving water or in not polluting the planet.” (HH13)

Say wut? The song has absolutely nothing to say on the subjects of politics, water conservation or pollution. Justin wanted to rock on his newly-purchased Gibson and sing about how things were going in his latest love affair—end of story! Pinder lifted one common phrase and used it to make the song something it was not. Shame on him!

I love this song and I don’t give a crap whether it’s a question or an answer. I love the subtlety of the acoustic guitar intro and the wah-wah figure on the mellotron, and I REALLY LOVE IT when Justin plays that marvelous phrase on electric guitar backed by Lodge’s assertive bass and Graeme’s strong beat. I am absolutely thrilled that the Moodies permitted a few overdubs on this piece, giving Justin the opportunity to provide stereo counterpoints on his beloved Gibson. The melody is gorgeous and eminently singable, and the chord pattern combines major, minor and seventh chords in keeping with the shifting moods of a narrative involving a relationship in its early stages of “Do we really want to couple?”

In the sadness of your smile,
Love is an island way out to sea.
But it seems so long ago,
We have been ready trying to be free.

And it’s up to you,
Why won’t you say?
Make our lives turn out this way,
If they knew,
That we have got nothing to lose.
No reason to hide from what’s true.

There is never a reason to hide from what’s true in love or in life.

“Minstrel’s Song” (Lodge): To his credit, John provides the first genuine answer song on the album on the side that is supposed to be about answers. It’s a nice tune, but it’s the same message John had delivered again and again: love will save the world. One would think that “After a decade of peace and love, it still seemed we hadn’t made a difference in 1970,” he would have taken a different approach to break through the muck, but this is doing the same old thing and expecting a different result. I admire John’s perseverance in singing about the power of love, but the song would have been stronger if it had been attached to a problematic question in desperate need of an answer that only love could solve.

The other problem with the song is the repetition of the phrase “love is all around.” The Troggs had already claimed ownership of that phrase with their worldwide top ten hit back in 1967, and repurposing it makes the song sound a bit stale.

“Dawning Is the Day” (Hayward): Justin’s answer to the world crisis is essentially “be yourself.” That brief interpretation might earn a response along the lines of “So what?”, but “be yourself” is the answer to the question posed in Graeme’s “Don’t You Feel Small?”

Hooray! We have a match!

Graeme’s comment about people “allowing themselves to be made to feel very insignificant by establishment things” describes the experience of the person Justin is trying to help in “Dawning of the Day.” In this case, the establishment is likely the employer, for we all know it’s virtually impossible to be your true self in the workplace. The opening lines of the Acoustic Disturbance song “Something’s Lost” captured the dilemma: “It’s just a job, the place we piss away all our time/We play our parts, read conventional theatre lines.” The song later describes the situation as “pure insanity,” an assessment shared by Mr. Hayward:

Rise, let us see you
Dawning is the day
Miss, misty meadow
You will find your way
Wake up in the morning to yourself
And leave this crazy life behind you
Listen, we’re trying to find you

Consistent with other songs on the album, Justin also embraces the healing power of natural settings; in this case, the sea. As one who has lived all but one year in places where salt water is nearby, I can attest to the perspective-expanding sense of freedom in a solitary stroll along the beach.

Flow to the sea
You know where to go
But still we are free
No one tells the wind which way to blow

Derek Varnals slipped in a bit of studio trickery on this track; the mandolin you hear in the song isn’t a mandolin but Justin’s 12-string guitar recorded at half-speed. I love the bridge and its “fuck-all” message of “Baby, there’s no price upon your head/Sing it, shout it/Now the angry words have all been said/Do it, don’t doubt it”). I also heartily approve of the imaginative chord sequence that moves steadily from C to F#, adding a nice bit of musical tension in the transition to the instrumental passage featuring flute and mellotron.

“Melancholy Man” (Pinder): If you find the lyrics to “Melancholy Man” somewhat confusing and contradictory, it’s because you’re assuming the song is a first-person narrative. Mike Pinder commented on that incorrect assumption in HH#33:

The single most incorrect interpretation of “Melancholy Man” had been that maybe it was a song about me being melancholy. I used that as a way of saying that there are different levels of melancholy, and that this was a melancholy for the whole world, because of the impending breakdown of the structure in all things that we have seen happen since the song came out, 26 years ago. What we’re seeing now is just more results of what was being done then, and what continues to be done by the industrial giants and governments of the world, and the greedy little cigar-smoking guys like on the album cover.

It’s a melancholy I feel every day when trying to convince certain EU members of the importance of human rights and constantly running up against a brick wall of indifference. It’s a melancholy I feel when reading any article about the moral collapse of the United States and the stream of lies and hate spewed by the Trump administration. Like Mr. Pinder, I cling to the belief that people will eventually wake up and see they’re on a path to self-destruction, but it gets tougher to maintain that stance with every step backward initiated by all those angry, hate-filled voices.

I’m a melancholy man
That’s what I am
All the world surrounds me and my feet are on the ground
I’m a very lonely man
Doing what I can
All the world astounds me and I think I understand
That we’re going to keep growing
Wait and see

When all the stars are falling down
Into the sea and on the ground
And angry voices carry on the wind
A beam of light will fill your head
And you’ll remember what’s been said
By all the good men this world’s ever known

And despite his belief in human growth, Mike does express some uncertainty about whether the blind will ever see the truth:

Another man is what you’ll see
Who looks like you and looks like me
And yet, somehow he will not feel the same
His life caught up in misery
He doesn’t think like you and me
‘Cause he can’t see what you and I can see

When he repeats those verses and riffs on the theme, you can feel Mike’s deep sense of concern for a crumbling world. The passion in his voice conveys a desperate belief that things must get better, as if he’s trying to convince both the listeners and himself that a fresh dawn surely lies just around the corner. In addition to Mike’s impassioned vocal, the song is strengthened by the simplicity of the arrangement, as noted by Mr. Edge in HH#33:

It was an obvious, brilliant song. It was one of those that was so complete as a song…that you had to keep it simple. You knew straightaway that you didn’t need to do a lot to [it]. All you needed . . . was to reinforce the harmonies that were coming off the piano . . . without changing the chord sequences, the two different melody lines, and then the way the two melody lines intertwined. If you would have orchestrated it, it would have actually spoiled [the effect].”

All true, and the only complaint I have about the song is that it goes on a bit too long.

Mike said he had been thinking a lot about Martin Luther King when composing the piece. This passage from Dr. King’s last speech clearly reveals the influence:

 . . . I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but “fear itself.” But I wouldn’t stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.”

Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: “We want to be free.”

And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

And that is where we are today. My greatest hope is that someday, history will stop repeating itself.

“The Balance” (Edge, Thomas): The closing track combines Edge’s poetry with choral responses, both designed to enlighten the listeners on how to cope with a seriously fucked-up world. Though Edge had a tendency to resort to 19th-century phrasing (as in “he took to himself an orange”), there’s no denying that Mike Pinder had a natural gift for storytelling with his warm, slightly smoky voice, excellent articulation, and his instinctive ability to vary his vocal dynamics according to the narrative flow.

The poem begins with a tired traveler who happens upon an orange grove, tastes the fruit, and decides to rest on the ground while viewing the sights above him.

And he felt the Earth to his spine and he asked
And he saw the tree above him
And the stars
And the veins in the leaf
And the light
And the balance
And he saw magnificent perfection
Whereon he thought of himself in balance
And he knew he was

I’m not sure how he could see the veins in the leaf when there are stars in the sky, but whatever. The point Edge was attempting to make is that perfection exists in the natural world; the implication is we’re often too busy with other things to take the time to appreciate it. The verse is immediately followed by the chorus, where at least three of the band members join voices to encourage listeners to leave the daily grind for a while and embrace the eternal beauty and symmetry of Mother Nature:

Just open your eyes and realize the way it’s always been
Just open your mind and you will find the way it’s always been
Just open your heart and that’s a start

The balance the traveler achieved through nature leads him to reconsider times when he slipped out of balance in regards to his relationships with other human beings:

And he thought of those he angered
For he was not a violent man
And he thought of those he hurt
For he was not a cruel man
And he thought of those he frightened
For he was not an evil man

And he understood, he understood himself
Upon this he saw that when he was of anger or knew hurt or felt fear
It was because he was not understanding
And he learned compassion
And with his eye of compassion
He saw his enemies like unto himself
And he learned love
Then he was answered

Just open your eyes and realize the way it’s always been
Just open your mind and you will find the way it’s always been
Just open your heart and that’s a start

Mike’s emphasis on the word “compassion” tells us that he believed that empathy for one’s enemies was the answer to the many problems in human relations, and the chorus backs him up by arguing that all we have to do to make peace with one another is to open our hearts. I hate to sound jaded, but I will never have empathy for Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump because all they would do is exploit what they would certainly interpret as a weakness. You can’t empathize with soulless, narcissistic assholes who are incapable of empathy. I would love to live in a balanced world where caring about others is as important as caring for oneself, but we live in a world oriented towards competition, not collaboration. The Moodies were preaching what they had always preached, and while a few more people may have gotten it, they had no new answers for those in denial about the sad state of the world.

That’s okay. After all, they were just singers in a rock ‘n’ roll band. And like Justin said, “Looking for the answers will keep us going for a long time.”

I have to admit that when I hear the phrase “you will find the way it’s always been,” my initial response is, “Yes, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Maybe I should change my moniker to “The Skeptical Idealist.”

*****

Even though the band members may not have been on the same page when it came to explaining what A Question of Balance was all about, the album is another chapter in their quest to convince people to abandon hate, death and war and embrace love, life and peaceful collaboration. Having admitted that there was still a long way to go to achieve that goal, the Moodies could have said, “Fuck it, let’s just forget about these morons and move on,” but they chose to continue the “war of love” because they believed in it.

I find that orientation deeply inspiring because I’ve always believed that perseverance is far more satisfying than giving up. Dr. King never gave up on his dream and I will never give up on mine, no matter how many temporary defeats tempt me to do so. I found this little bit of wisdom on Morning Coach that explained why the Moodies stuck to their dream and why I will stick to mine:

If you have a dream in life and you know it’s something that will make you happy, and it’s worth chasing, then you don’t have a reason to give up. Of course, tough times will come, and other people will try to bring you down, but only you know the actual value of your dream. Your dream serves as the guiding point for everything that you will do in life, and nobody has the right to control you. If you give up, it’s like you have given up on life.

Failure is not an option!