Let’s take a little jaunt into the center of my brain.
I often find myself driving in my car on a road or a freeway or one of those frontage road things on the side of a freeway and I pull up next to another car driving around the same speed as me. And while my car and their car hovers around the same area I turn to look at them.
Oh, look. It’s an old guy with big black glasses who is squinting at the road. Oh, look. It’s a young teenager who looks way too young to be driving, or talking on her cell phone. Oh, look. It’s the new nuclear family (father, mother, two boys, a girl, and three toy dogs) all frustrated to still be in their car on such a sunny day.
And all I think to myself is… these people are living their own self-important lives with their own hopes and dreams and disappointments and things that they’re worried about and things that they’re hoping for and pains in their bones and prescriptions they’ve got to pick up and calls to return and people to see and relationships to mend and bills to pay and workout schedules to get back to…
And quite honestly, it sort of makes me sad.
Not sad that they’ve got all that work to do (please, hire a personal assistant)… But that every single one of us…every person across this entire damn world, we are all so self-important in the quiet times, when we’re alone just by ourselves, when we’re dreaming of our futures with the ones that we love (or hate) that we really never stop to realize that, in reality, none of us are any more important than anyone else.
You can talk about the metaphor about people being like ants. All rushing around doing their one thing and accomplishing their puny set of goals. In reality, that’s true. That’s what we are. Never stopping to pay attention to our surroundings or the beautiful sky on any particular morning… We are one-track minds, pushing through to the finish line.
Sure, there are people who make a difference. People who go out and interact and observe and enjoy. But the majority of society (especially the USA) is all about work work work work work. And even when it’s not, it’s all about me me me me me.
Everybody wants to believe that in the larger scheme of the Universe, that we’re all going to make our mark. Make a dent. Be remembered. But while we’re worrying about that, are we missing everything else that’s going on around us?
You know, like the fact that Professional Wrestling is fake? Or that cotton candy is really just a huge ball of sugar? Or that spiders are biting our legs on a nightly basis then disappearing into the walls and we never eve know it? Or that sourdough bread is, well, really damn sour?
What’s my point?
We are all strangers. Most people are fine with that. I am not. So starting today I am going to go out into the world and introduce myself to every single person I see on the street until I my numbers have equaled the total population of the United States…which hovers somewhere around 300 million.
“Hi. I’m Paul Davidson. How do you do?”
(Please imagine that I’m reaching my hand out to shake yours right at this moment. And that, just for your own personal information, I have a damn good, really strong, extremely sexy handshake.)
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