Said Stacy Smith after a long hug. I haven't seen her for nearly 2 years, and the first thing she says is, "You look so old." It was then that I realized that time really has been passing these past few years. How easy and how deceiving it is to stay in one place for three years, go to the same school, go (or do not go) to classes in the same classrooms, listen to the same boring rhetoric. After 3 years of this, the memories of the University of Montana begin to bend, and blur into one. Sometimes it takes a voice, a face, a person, a chance encounter, to force you to remember that the whole "life" you spent trapped in the microcosm that is College, time is still spinning around you, circling back, and spinning again. I truly believe that more people than any of us would even imagine are far too caught up in this swirl, and forget what really matters. The more time that passes that I use AOL and MSN Messenger, the more I see this to be true. Everyday I speak to people and the first things out of their "mouths" is "How are you?" Today I wondered, and then asked a friend really how they were. The strange thing is, when asked "Really, how are you doing?" most people are so taken aback that someone actually wants to know, that they do not know how to immediately answer. We are a culture that stopped caring, and the worst of it is, we stopped caring about each other. When was this evil and apathy born? Where does it come from? What is it that made us all stop caring about anything other than the quest for the almighty dollar, the "next big thing," fast women, faster cars, and the fastest way to die with the most toys. I am beyond ready to pack up, and move somewhere that has never heard of MTV, 50 Cent, or Pizza Hut. Call me idealistic, but I know there is a place out there that feels like home to me, I know there are places out there that are inhabited by people that still care. Do not get me wrong, all the people that I talk to on AIM and MSN are my friends, my close friends, but I just think in general, we all ask "How are you" far too often and do not stop to actually listen to the response. We are all trying so hard to be something other than ourselves, something better or smarter, richer or more famous that we forget to Stop, and be ourselves. We forget to stop, and allow others to do the same.
"Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly." --St. Francis de Sales--
|
