Jack’s saying that there is crime on the street, illegal drugs, and cancer (some of the world’s ills), but also no nine lives to tamper with (like a cat; word to Soup lol), there is only one life and so we need to do what we need to do to survive. He began asking God again for proof that he was still with him, and paying attention to all of the troubles that were sneaking into Jack’s life.

As these problems came about in his life, he began to fear death and salvation after death. When asking his mom about it, though, his mom was upset that he had lost some of his faith and told him not to ask those questions again.

He still had a loss of faith, just “inverted his conscience” and kept all of his thoughts to himself.

He “reworded a third of what he had not yet been answered,” meaning instead of asking IS GOD THERE?, he reworded those three words to be GOD IS THERE. Symbolically, hushing his questioning conscience

Prior to his first grandpa dying, he had never faced any real problems in life. The same year, his second grandpa died as well; goes to show that the troubles began piling on for him

He misses the old days in which he didn’t have to worry about things. Everything was a game, and he had no fear stress or concept of the challenges he’d face later in life. He owned his life at the time, had experienced love, and felt like he was on top of the world.

He now can barely hear the words from his friends he used to know. He looks back on the times they went “Car egging”, and one time in particular in which he almost got his ass beat for throwing an egg at a honda.

He uses the egg incident as a symbol for the way he didn’t know about the world. He thought throwing eggs at cars was all a game, but now he’s mature enough to know about the world and the prices that come from actions like that. He knows both that he has hurt people, and that he has been hurt.

He felt like the life he lived at home was limiting him from his dreams. He was afraid to let go of memories he had with his neighborhood friends, whom looked up to him and ultimately gave him more confidence to pursue his dream; there’s the irony.

The whole mood of his home now is foreign to him. All of his clothes and cologne are at school, symbolizing the way he’s really just moved on from his previous home. He refers to his previous home as the place he couldn’t wait to get away from

This begins his retreat to the past, and looking back on the friends he’s had over the years and may have let go.

By “Dear Summer, where’s Autumn gone?” Jack is messing with the real order of the seasons, which keys at the fact he’s going back in time. He wrote this song in Autumn, while thinking about the previous Summer.

His city, or what he used to know, isn’t the same anymore and never will be the same, because everyone has moved on with their lives and gone their separate ways for school

He doesn’t smoke anymore, because he’s changed. Or has he evolved? That would mean that he is the same person, just looks different.

This last half a bar wraps up the whole point of his verse. He feels like he will have distanced himself so much from society in the future, that he won’t even want a network of friends anymore. He doesn’t trust where society’s going, and wishes to be isolated.

It’s a dark reality, he admits, and says that we all seem to be confused by false promises given to us as children that everything would wind up peachy keen. These promises of life/liberty/happiness have been so engrained in our eyes, that we are fooled by reality. He says that we can even bluff an optometrist (one who studies eyes) into seeing the light, and that what’s really in his eyes is residuals from the weed he’s smoked, which has given him false happiness