Hope

I believe this song was written about the balance between pride and humility, to explain this I am going to try and portray what I'm saying in short verse interpretations. This is not to say it can't be about religion or surfing or anything really. There is pride & humility in just about every task, action, job, hobby, belief, etc, so yah it could be about any of those also,

Pride teaches us humility when it let's us down and this is how,

Shadow and reflection both represent pride

There are many types of pride so for this I'm going to refer to the 8 types of pride described in this blog, http://herculodge.typepad.com/herculodge/2011/07/the-8-types-of-pride.html

Your head represent your pride, if you have ever been told you have a big head, or don't let it go to your head, it's referring to the arogance and pride one has consuming their thoughts and getting in the way of their focus on what got them there.

Your heart represents humility, it's an old word and it has many meanings and interpretation also, it's lowliness of mind, like being the son of god and washing a begger's feet. It's your heart that tells you to do the right thing or has empathy, it's heart that makes you fall in love in the first place. Your pride follows, like a shadow it is always chasing your heart/humility around. When it finally does catch up to you, it is by defeating you enough to have humility again in the process what you learned to love was your shadow chasing you. You didn't know this while it was happening but now that you have humility again the blurry & out of focus reflection (pride) let's you see everything that led to your defeat, ie. hindsight is 20/20, a warning nobody heard.

better hope you are not alone, can refer to physical pride and vanity, when one believes they are better looking than someone and not worth sharing their attention with them. If you have to much pride you become arrogant, if you feel like you are better than someone else because of your status or anything you have pride, while you have this pride you burn a lot of bridges, everyone that you shunned remembers how you treated them, and when you are defeated is when you are going to feel most alone, not having the same luxuries you won't be granted the same attention or privilege.

reverb is just a room, if you are an arrogant movie star or anyone for that matter that suddenly landed on an island with people that didn't know them they would lose their status. In the same way who and what we surround ourselves with effect how fast we are defeated by pride or how fast it chases us around. Pride can destroy relationships, when someone can't admit they are wrong and refuse to understand the other person, it's at a standstill and cannot grow. Our pride is not being fed anymore and goes back on the move and often our heart chases it after we have already destroyed what we already fell in love with and gave our heart too..

Yo don't always have to do this, sometimes you can practice humility and have heart, and serve one another.

Pride = a feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

Humility = a modest or low view of one's own importance; humbleness.

I love it! This song is definitely about religion, probably christianity.

"Do you think that you’re not alone? You really think that you are immune to Its gonna get that the best of you Its gonna lift you up and let you down It will defeat you then teach you to get back up After it takes all that You learn to love"

The song is saying if you believe god is there and you are not alone, you better hope you're right. you better hope you're not alone. The weight of religion will defeat you, then teach you to get back up... but you don't always have to raise your religious knowledge over the instincts of the human heart. Follow your heart, not what people force into your mind. Religion is a ghost waiting to bring you down.

This line is so true... in dealing with christianity:

"It will teach to love what you're afraid of After it takes away all that you've learned to love."

Religion just drains peoples minds.

As I read the posted interpretations of this song, I am surprised at how absurd, regularly bizarre, and frequently exhausting they are. For some of you, perhaps a bit of psychotherapy and/or anger management classes would greatly improve your lives. ;)

First a bit of Jack Johnson trivia: Until a serious injury ended his professional surfing career, Jack was a renowned surfer (from Wikipedia: "At 17, he [Jack Johnson] became the youngest invitee to make the surfing finals at the Pipeline Masters on Oahu's north shore.").

SONG MEANINGS: This is a song about SURFING. Much more cerebral than, say, "Surfing USA," by The Beach Boys, but still it's about surfing. Not about god, nor homosexuals (example of a bizarre earlier post), just serious advice to a less experienced surfer. Jack tries to convey the visceral and disorienting experience of surfing in beautiful music and lyrics. And what a great job!

"You don't always have to hold your head higher than your heart"

This is a reference to a surf stance/move. To catch a wave, you must locate and "paddle" to your wave, lying flat on your board, then move to a crouching position, where your head is not higher than your heart. This move is called the "pop up", the step between laying flat on the board and riding your wave. (Great pictures of this can be found all over the web.)

"You better hope you're not alone"

The disorienting and constantly shifting nature of surfing carries with it a lot of dangers, so, "You better hope you're not alone, " means exactly that: Do not surf alone; have a "surf buddy" at all times--if you hit a rip (current) for example, you could be carried out to sea. Your surf buddy could save your life.

I'm a huge fan of Jack's, too, but, folks, please take him of your pedestals. He'd probably be uncomfortable up there, don't you think?

A great surfing song. It lifts me up every time I listen to it.

fragin can u go fuck urself please?

Wow Jack. It's funny how I just heard this song for the first time and it already rings true. Now if only she knew...

once again fragin...GET A F*****G LIFE

One of the most amazing thing about Jack's work is the ability to make his lyrics be specific enough to capture his thoughts, while also vague enough to mean something to each listener as well.

I feel like this song is hinting at religion: "Your reflection is a blur Out of focus But in confusion The frames are suddenly burnt And in the end of a roll of illusion A ghost waiting its turn Now I see can right through It’s a warning that nobody heard"

I think he's saying people get so lost in society's religious demands that they constantly compare themselves to their reflection/shadow which represents their ideal religious-self. But religions so many contradicting things that in the end, "the frames are suddenly burnt and in the end of a roll of illusion I can see a ghost waiting its turn". Meaning it comes full circle and the next ideal self is waiting to try it all over again.

"It will teach you to love what you’re afraid of After it takes away all that You learn to love"

He's saying religion wants us to appreciate the scare tactics (satan, hell, torture, pain) it uses to help gain "believers". The cost of giving that appreciation is to give up your free will to a supreme being (takes away all that you've learned to love).

"But you don’t Always Have to hold to your head Higher than your heart You better hope you’re not alone"

Practicing most religions is commonly thought of as all giving your heart out to those in need and loving your God. But really it's about self-control and patience, which are obviously mental characteristics. You better hope you're not alone - saying that we better hope we have made true relationships with those people we can see and touch around us because when you get upset or life doesn't react fairly to you, you need other people. Humans cannot be without each other.

Your echo comes back out of tune

• you've slipped in your struggles with faith

Now you can probably get used to Reverb is just a room The problem is that there’s no truth

• saying there is no factual evidence to back up religions, that's why it's called "faith". But for some reason we can still just accept it at face value and get used to it

It's fading way too soon The shadow is on the move And maybe you should be moving too

• as science/technology/human progress moves forward, religion is getting left behind in it's own contradictions. he's suggesting to think for yourslef and maybe move on as well.

Just my opinion, let me know what u think.

I don't think it's about religion per say as much as faith and nature. The idea of "your echo comes back out of tune" is like people expecting to be this ideal self, but they aren't there yet, its "out of tune" or a "blur" Sometimes faith kicks us in the ass when you have a lot of faith in love, "better hope you're not alone".

Faith can be a good thing and a bad thing depending on what you put your faith in and if you know what you are putting your faith in, "it's gonna lift you up and let you down"

I know i'm only taking segments of the song, but if you think faith in the overall picture of this then it kinda works.

faith and religion are fairly closely related, though. i think the song is about how some people use religion in a negative way, and the way religion can impact negatively on the world.

Religion can be about molding people to a certain ideal, like bmcva10 said, and to me thats what "it will defeat you and then teach you to get back up" refers to.

I think "you better hope you're not alone" refers to the religious belief that we, as humans, are not alone because God is always there for us. jack is saying that the person had better hope that this is true. they had better hope that their beliefs are the correct ones.

"You dont always have to hold your head higher than your heart". to me that speaks about a 'holier-than-thou' attitude, and also the way religious people sometimes use their head (their knowledge of the Bible or Koran, etc) to guide them, instead of paying attention to what's in their heart. Such as a religious person who makes friends with someone, and then stops talking to them when they find out they are homosexual.

esme for ever, as a strong Christian myself i would love to disagree with you. if you follow your bible correctly then you will never stop talking to anyone because they are homosexual. i may not agree with homosexuality but my bible seems to tell me not to judge my neighbor, and to love all my brothers. people who discriminate and try to use scripture to back it are using it out of context and therefore not following their bible