Pork And Beans by Weezer

The turth is that sometimes I feel pretty insecure. I like to tell myself that I don’t care what other people think. I reassure friends that their decisions are their own and that they are the only person who really have to live with their own decisions.

I tell people that others who comment about their lives really don’t know them so their thoughts are invalid and in reality no one really cares about things that people do nearly as much as people think. And I reassure my students that the most important person to respect and to love is himself or herself because there is so much inside each and every one of us to love.

But right now I feel like a hypocrite, because I’m not as together as I like people to think. Internal motivation is not nearly enough to keep me going every day, I worry about what people will think about my decisions, I doubt myself and my own abilities and at times I do things to just to prove things to others.

On the spectrum of insecurity I’m not like all the way in the negatives, in general I feel pretty about myself, don’t get me wrong. There are just moments when life begins to feel overwhelming and its petrfying. When it all piles up, the mountain of life can be quite daunting.

How do you get going? The first step is always the hardest. As much as I tell other people things about self-confidence and all that jazz, when you tell yourself those things, it really doesn’t have the same effect. Sitting here, writing this, right now, I’m feeling quite overwhelmed by life, and I’m feeling pretty unable to do anything productive (well, besides laundry), but “Pork And Beans” is helping.

I’ve never been a big Weezer fan. I love “Buddy Holly” which I wrote an earlier post as well as “Keep Fishin’” which has an awesome music video featuring the Muppets. My friends who I carpool with likes Weezer so the other day I got a bunch of their songs and listening through them, “Pork And Beans” stuck out.

Inspired by a meeting with records executives who asked Weezer to make more commercial music, Weezer responded with “Pork And Beans." It’s a simple song about being happy with yourself, not caring what other people think and being proud to do what you love to do even if it’s eating candy with pork and beans.

There’s something a little elementary school about this song with the “pork and beans” idea which is reminiscent of “green eggs and ham.” The song is shamelessly catchy dropping names like Timbaland and Oakley. But it’s general upbeat feeling and “I don’t care” swagger that is infectious and I can’t really listen to this song, without nodding my head to the beat and feeling a little better about life.

Weezer’s music has always expressed a level of optimism, looking at the worlds troubles with ironic humor and catchy melodies. “Pork And Beans” feels like a friend, standing by you, reminding you to declare, “I don’t care” to the world and how good it feels to be “fine and dandy with the me inside.”

Yeah, I have no idea how I’m going to get all the stuff done this weekend that I’d like to finish, but you know that I really don’t have anything to prove to anyone else. There’s nothing I can confess that will make the people around me love me less.

At the end of the day, everything is going to be okay.