Day 2: The Real World

The funny thing about living life is that in the end, it's what kills you.

We get up at 7 am because our job is what provides us with the means to survive. We commute to work, taking the fastest route possible, cussing out the dumb blonde in her daddy's BMW because if we're late, that job we desperately cling to is gone. While at work we keep our heads down, tirelessly and methodically doing our various tasks until well after the workday has ended.
Coffee break? There's no time for interaction, that report needed to be done yesterday!

Then, when it's all said and done, we go home, much too tired to talk to anyone.

It's no secret that the American culture is one of unbridled individualism, but I never really noticed how ingrained it was until I decided trying to get out of my own world and into other people's.

You see, the problem is that people are like cars. Cars without brakes--going downhill--at 70 MPH--with their engines on fire. It takes every bit of concentration we have to keep our cars on the road, to see through the smoke blazing out from under our hood. The further we make it, the faster we go, and the more desperate our situation becomes. The last thing we need is someone in the passenger's seat asking us how our day went.

It's this kind of attitude I encountered on day 2.

For lunch I went to a small cafe near my house. I ordered their special "green eggs and ham" breakfast wrap, presumably in a sub-conscious effort to counteract yesterday's debacle of eating lunch for breakfast. The man behind the counter looked even more impatient than the gentleman at Breuggers from the day before. He asked me how I was doing, but two words into his own greeting he was already turned around looking towards the back for a co-worker that seemed to have gone AWOL. I'm no detective, but something told me he didn't actually care much about how my day was going. I can't blame him though. As I said before, life is hard! We don't have time for such pleasantry while at work.

As I walked outside to sit in the sun and enjoy my Dr. Seuss inspired concoction, I noticed that everyone around me was terribly isolated. There were probably 10 people on the patio eating lunch, all huddled at their own tiny tables. All of them were alone, one hand on their food and the other on their mouse, clicking away at their laptops. 


While I sat in the sun quietly eating my lunch, I debated whether I was going to bother any of these people. They all just seemed so incredibly busy. Their faces were filled with such concentration, I wouldn't be surprised to learn they were actually disarming bombs strapped to all the restaurant's chairs. After inhaling my delicious green burrito, I sat there for a few minutes in a heap of social anxiety. A mental tennis match took place inside my head. Was I going to speak to any of these people or not? Here was a perfect opportunity to start a conversation with someone, yet everyone around me looked as though they were 10 miles deep, submerged in their own reality. I simply didn't have the heart to yank them out of it.

I stood up, threw my trash away, and silently headed back to my office.

Such is the way of the real world.

Several hours later, it was time to go home. The day was shaping up such that once again the bus ride would be my savior. Sure enough, when I reached the bench to wait for my ride, a young man sat down next to me. As with every stranger I had seen so far today, he was staring intently at an electronic device. Already discouraged by my failure at lunch, I quickly resigned to the fact that I wouldn't be speaking to this individual, either.

But then, as if the universe wasn't about to let me give up, my bus came featuring flashing orange letters on the front marquee: "Bus Full." The driver flew by my stop without even so much as a tap of the brakes. I'd be waiting for at least another 20 minutes. That was plenty of time to find a way to pull this kid out of his technological love affair.

After a few seconds of mental preparation, I blurted out the world's most obvious question: "Is that an Iphone?"

Brilliant.

The young man looked up as if he didn't know someone was sitting next to him and answered kindly that it was. I told him my phone was a piece of crap and that I desperately wanted one as well. He said they were nice, but unfortunately didn't support flash. As we talked more, I could tell he really didn't mind having this conversation, and was maybe even enjoying it a little bit. We got on the topic of Assassin's Creed, and he informed me he would be buying the game even though he doesn't own an XBOX. A bold move, indeed.

We chitchatted a bit more. He was a freshman, headed to an adviser meeting across campus. I got the feeling he wasn't all too excited about it which might explain why he looked so down when I first saw him. Eventually his bus came, and he hopped up quickly, uttered a short goodbye and was on his way.

I'm going to be completely honest. A simple act such as speaking to a stranger is deceptively challenging. It's not easy to talk to someone when they are in their own world. I can't help but feel like I'm bothering them. In fact, I probably am. Try it sometime. Look around you and see if the people nearby look like they want anything to do with you.

Everyone has their own problems. This kid really didn't want to go to his adviser meeting. The man behind the counter at the cafe probably really didn't want to be working, a fact made no less relevant by his slacking co-worker. The people eating lunch outside were probably feeling a bit guilty for taking time to enjoy the nice weather, so they brought their computers to get a little extra work done.

Such is the way of the real world. 

I hope I brightened that young man's day just a little bit. He certainly smiled a couple times during the conversation, so it's not completely out of the question. Maybe he enjoyed having someone in his passenger seat for a few moments.

I leaned back as I sat in the shade, spread open my arms and rested them on the back of the bench. A slight breeze cooled me off, and I watched as endless amounts of busy people drove their cars up and down the hill. I couldn't help but imagine a little smoke coming from their engines.