The song’s relationship with current events also took on darker and more charged dimensions. In March 2001, 15 year old Charles Andrew Williams shot and killed two classmates at his school in Santee, California. He had left a note for his father with lyrics from the song, trying to explain his feelings. The key lines were “I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter.” That use did not change the song itself, of course, but it shows how dangerously open a piece can become when it speaks so bluntly about futility, dead ends, and despair.