Remember cities? If you live in a suburb or beachy town, you might have forgotten what it’s like to bump into people. To listen to strangers. To sit squished next to another human on a public train. I guess that’s the reason a lot of people move to the suburbs or a beachy town. They’ve had enough of sitting squished next to other humans.
But I haven’t yet reached that point. And being in San Francisco last weekend reminded me how special it can be to feel other humans RIGHTTHERE, up against me, in my face, in my space. Their languages bounced around me. Their stories lived on their faces. They smiled at me. They asked me for money. They told me the secrets of their city. CITY!
Usually, if my foot touches another person’s foot, just for a tiny second, we both say ‘sorry.’ One day it became appropriate to be scared of other humans. Scared of touching them. Scared of talking to them. Scared of riding in elevators with them. But we’re all so interesting and different and similar. And we’re all in it together. It’s like we’re in our own season of ‘Lost.’ We all randomly landed on this strange planet, Earth. Nobody knows how we got here, why we got here, what we’re supposed to do here. And there are several fat guys who never lose weight.
At first, we might have been freaked. But now that there are so many of us, it all seems normal. It’s not! It’s weird and we have no idea what we’re doing here and so we’re building streets and electing politicians and drilling oil and having babies, but we have no idea if that’s what we’re really supposed to do.
Thankfully, we’re all stranded here together, so let’s figure it out together. Let’s enjoy that we’re part of a pretty cool species and not trapped in some dream and nobody is eating us or whatever really happened in ‘Lost.’ (never saw it– but once I waited on Matthew Fox at a restaurant and almost cried because he was so attractive.)
I declare today People Day. Let’s go out and crash into each other (metaphorically).
Go ask a homeless guy why he’s homeless. Go tell a stranger you love her scarf. Go meet your fellow Earth-dwellers. Let’s delight in the stories of others. Let’s touch feets under the table. Let’s strike up conversations in elevators. Let’s just be the interesting, funny humans we are.
What’s that? You’d rather watch ‘Lost’ than talk to a man in the elevator? Oh.