"The Sum Of It All" Lyrics

What is the trade-off in your life, What did
you pay? What is the price? What did you
way it up against? Was it worth it?

My dreams run amok, they don't take in my means.
They break in then break out,
they're making a scene. I wake up and leg it
and chase them with both hands.
They float and don't care where my feet land.
You've gotta stay fed but you've gotta stay friends,
what I'd do for the roof over my head

The blood, the sweat, the tears I've shed.
What I'd bend for the ends, well.. that depends
on the prize and the pride of the name that I inherited;
dirty hands; clean heart; rose up from the sediment
I ain't trying to build a mansion or expand a settlement
or be an empty-headed guest on Letterman (fire!)

Gotta keep the engine purring, and the fire stoked,
redemption round the corner, holding onto higher hopes.
Bigger than the music and all the liner notes - the good,
the bad and everything that I had hoped.

What is the trade-off in your life, What did you pay?
What is the price? What did you way it up against?
Was it worth it? You compromise so much that you
forgot what you want. You are the sum of it all,
is that what you want?

Report read 'she's a dreamer, something wrong,
we should screen her'
How could they know the carnival in her fix when life got grim.
If only they could taste the real thing,
beneath their feet, beyond the ceiling.
Like hounds, they'd be stuck on it, chasing, loving,
hating, bathing, shaking it. They'd be doped on the feeling of it,
move mountains clothed in it.
Battle waves that swallow ships just to get a hit.

Was it worth it? You compromise so much that you,
forgot what you want. You are the sum of it all,
is that what you want?

I run myself (away-oh) into the ground (away-oh).
I live up to my father's name

Once more at a crossroads, looking up at signposts.
All of those lives you'll never live and cannot know.
So I wonder, will I wander or hold my line?
And I find myself longing for what can never be mine

This tale's tied together with invisible threads,
lingering on what she said. What if instead of a
missed opportunity, it just wasn't meant to be?
Please believe I never faked what it meant to me.
Everything must change, don't I know it, in a moment,
hesitate and you've blown it.
You want to know the possible,
but it would freak you out if you were shown it,
so I'm holding my course until this road ends.
I know the pen is constant, but the ink is transient.
More inclined to letting it ride than planning it.
So I take my lumps, 'cause I wrote this story:
it's always feast or famine; always death or glory.

What is the trade-off in your life, What did you pay?
What is the price? What did you way it up against?
Was it worth it? You compromise so much that you forgot what you want.
You are the sum of it all, is that what you want?