Mee Wadayaki Jeewithe Lyrics by CT Fernando

Life is a honeycomb,
filled brimful with honey.
Drunk on it, humming our buzzing song,
let us take our ease as we please.
Let us fly from flower to flower,
gathering pollen, mouth to mouth.
The flowering vines where the sweetness overflows are the women,
let us go searching for them…

While the sun rises and the moon sets,
in the little span of time we have,
giving sweetness to sweetness, joining in to the honey,
let us become a swarm of honeybees.
The honeybees are you and me,
the worker bees, those are the women.
The honeybees (the honeybees) are you and me (are you and me),
the worker bees, those are the women.

Life is a honeycomb,
filled brimful with honey.
Drunk on it, humming our buzzing song,
let us take our ease as we please.

Our eyes are drawn to beautiful things
in this rich and wondrous world.
Every sight we see casts a spell on the mind,
gives the eyes a sweet delight.
Joy, sorrow and comfort,
it is our own heart that makes them.
Joy (joy), sorrow and comfort (sorrow and comfort),
it is our own heart that makes them.

Life is a honeycomb,
filled brimful with honey.
Drunk on it, humming our buzzing song,
let us take our ease as we please.
Let us fly from flower to flower,
gathering pollen, mouth to mouth.
The flowering vines where the sweetness overflows are the women,
let us go searching for them…
Let us go searching for them…
Let us go searching for them…

This is a light, playful song that turns life itself into a honeycomb. Instead of mourning how short life is, it grins at it. The whole idea is simple and warm: life is dripping with sweetness, so why not go from one good thing to the next and enjoy it while the enjoying is good. It is sung in the voice of someone telling a friend to loosen up and taste what is in front of him.

The picture at the heart of the song is bees and flowers. We are the honeybees, the singer says, buzzing along and getting tipsy on the nectar of being alive. The flowers we fly to, mouth to mouth, gathering pollen, are the sweet things life offers, and the line about the flowering vines where the sweetness overflows is a teasing nod to the women a young man chases after. In Sinhala, this bee and flower imagery has long stood for courtship and the pull of attraction, so the audience hears the wink behind the buzzing. There is a gentle joke folded in too, the song calls the men the mee masso (the drones, the honeybees) and the women the worker bees, the ones who really hold the hive together.

Then comes the line that gives the song its quiet weight. We only have a little time, the singer admits, while the sun keeps rising and the moon keeps setting, so let us join together as one swarm and make the most of it. Our eyes are pulled toward every beautiful thing in this rich, wondrous world, and every sight casts its own little spell. And the truest thought in the whole song lands almost in passing: joy and sorrow, comfort and pain, are not handed to us from outside, our own heart is what makes them. Happiness, the song says, is a thing you decide on.

So under all the buzzing and the bee jokes, this is a small piece of cheerful philosophy. Life is sweet if you choose to taste it that way, the time is short, and the heart is the one mixing the honey. It leaves you smiling rather than aching, which is exactly what it set out to do.