This song is banned from my playlist forever. I was born in 1974. In the 90's they played this song at every possible party and gig you can imagine, and I was very lonely at that time, I had no woman. The problem with this song is I basically couldn't understand the meaning of the words NO WOMAN NO CRY. I will explain, at least I will try to explain what that means, or what I mean by that. It means I couldn't understand what Bob Marley meant with the words NO WOMAN NO CRY in the sense that I was searching for the meaning, so, in the sense that I was searching for what he meant by that. Isn't it obvious, you will probably say. No, it isn't obvious, I was constantly searching for the meaning of the words NO WOMAN NO CRY, I asked myself, should I reverse the meaning or something, is it something ironic or anything like that? I was constantly thinking: there must be a hidden message in the words NO WOMAN NO CRY that I don't understand. I figured out that the first two words: NO WOMAN applied to me, but when I thought about the last two words, I got lost. And when I say I got lost, I mean really lost. I disappeared in other worlds where there is no possibility of escaping by any means, every time the dj played this song I disappeared deeper, and deeper, and deeper in the dark depths of an unknown world, in the depths of an non-existent world where the meaning and the sense of ideas and words, like I conceive the sense of ideas and words, haven't even been created yet. NO CRY? NO WOMAN NO CRY? I'm sorry, I didn't understand. This is not an act, I'm telling you the truth. If there's anyone not telling you the truth, it's Bob Marley. People that are in a lot of distress can lose their ability to understand the meaning of simple ideas and common words, and it's not a matter of intellectual capacity, it's solely due to a lack of motivation, being surrounded by horrible cold heartless people, being misunderstood, and alone, and the fatigue, and everyone hates the fact that you're not lucky (hate you). In my language (dutch) happy is: ge-lucky-g. To be exact, it's gelukkig (almost the same pronunciation). I was not lucky, and I was also not gelukkig. No woman no cry means: If you have no woman, let it go. There are two ways to let go the things that hurt you the most: a soft way, and a cruel way. A compassionate way, is a soft way. Trying to let go what hurts you the most by having people around you drinking, dancing, having big smiles on their faces, is a very cruel way. I was kinda disturbing the party, d'you know what I mean? My loneliness, personal growth and identity problems, and problems that were bound to end in the incapacity to commit to a stable relationship, is something that was imposed to me by all these people that just wanted to laugh and party, and I wasn't participative, and it bothered them all across my youth. They always felt like I was pointing out a problem with them because I wasn't participating. It's not that they had lack of comprehension or lack of compassion, but they were enemies of comprehension, and enemies of compassion. Their ideas about how people should deal with the problems that I dealt with are: party, laugh, and be happy, and they imposed their way of thinking to anyone around them that would have "deviating ideas" about how we should solve these problems, including me. First erase the problem, and then replace it by happiness and joy. But it's a stupid way to solve problems, it doesn't solve anything, it just doesn't work that way. If you have a problem, deal with the problem, face the problem. And don't impose your way of thinking to other young people that are struggling, you make their struggle even worse, because you are blind. Young men that are struggling have to meet a lot of people that are understanding, not blind people, the more people they meet that are understanding their struggle, the less they suffer. Isn't this song supposed to be a song about compassion? It's obvious I had to write that sentence, otherwise people would even start thinking that I don't get the purpose of it all. It's just that this song doesn't accomplish that purpose, this song accomplishes the opposite of what it's supposed to accomplish. It made a young man, like me at that time, feel a lot worse than I felt already, it didn't make me feel better at all. I was trying to get over having NO WOMAN and I was trying to NOT CRY, but my whole youth was thrown away in the sewer. I always felt like a non-entity, and when they played NO WOMAN NO CRY it always came across like the song of my enemy that was having a lot of fun with the fact that I was a loser that would never get a girl because of my ridiculousness, and all the people around me were always like: We don't have to get over anything, we're just having a huge party! So, I heard there were tensions in Jamaïca when Bob was young, he managed to use his influence to avoid conflicts, and make peace, that's what they said on TV, and I respect that, but I would appreciate it if Bob would keep his so-called knowledge about women to himself, and I would appreciate it if he would not come over here to teach me about loneliness, because his teachings about loneliness are 100% glory and 0% compassion, that's right, your song is zero % compassion, a big zero!