In memory of Matthew Perry

As a fitting remembrance of the late Matthew Perry, the fellow who brought Chandler Bing to life, allow me to reflect in academic form on a contradiction at the heart of the FRIENDS' theme song.

The first line of the first verse:

No one ever told you life was gonna be this way

seems in pretty direct conflict with the fifth line of the third verse:

Your mother told you there'd be days like these.

The predicate of the two sentences is identical: "to tell."

The subject affirmed by the latter would seem pretty clearly to be included in the subject denied in the former. That is: Mom is somebody.

And, considering the object case, life is a succession of days.

Perhaps some philosopher could defend the song from the charge that there is a DIRECT contradiction in the lyrics by contending that the object case in the former sentence seems to refer to a more pervasive condition of "life" than simply that it contains "days like these."

But is it possible that life could be this way without their being days like these? I think we have to channel that great lyricist, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The world is everything which comes at us within a day.

What does or does not come at us within a day are not things, but life.

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