-{ redgeek.net }-

Out with some friends, in a partially crowded bar, I’m navigating from the patio to the restroom. Two girls ensconced in some private conversation are oblivious to the blockade they’re providing. It may be important, who am I to say.

My bladder urging me onward: “Pardon me.”

He eyes jog slowly to mine, heavy with intoxicants.

“Do I know you?”

I’m looking past her, only my voice is directed toward her. “No.”

She doesn’t move, I turn to look at her.

I want to tell her I’m not picking up on her. I’m not interested. I’m not drunk, I’m not checking out her ass, my hand is on her shoulder to guide her slightly to the side and allow me passage to the head. But I don’t, I can resist the urge to tear down her inflated ego (at least until I write about it later, which she’ll never know about, and really doesn’t yield any reprisal or warm fuzzy for me.) I can let her assume I’m aborting a poorly executed pick-up. Fine, whatever, as long as she moves and I can pee.

She rolls her eyes over toward her friend, casting rays of annoyance through the arc. I nudge her to the side, passing without further comment.

Everyone has shitty days, and every day there’s people undergoing more hardship than most of us that have access to the internet will ever experience. But most people, people I respect and can have interesting and intelligent conversation with, people I enjoy hanging out with, don’t automatically assume that everything revolves around themselves. They have an expanded view of the world and see themselves as just a part of it. Is it the insulation from adversity that allows one’s focus to drift from the world to the self? Is it a lock of maturity or upbringing?

More than your style of speech, your topic gives you away, your perspective is revealed. The high schooler tend to speak of I: I love this, I hate that, the self in relation to others, the self as the center. Through the collegiate years, it tends to be broaden to include more of you: what do you like, what do you hate, others in relation to the self, others in the center. The larger socio-political economic stage enters and exerts influence.

The high-schooler tends toward search for consonance, the latter, comparison. The world has expanded along with the scope of responses and elicited emotion. Later, the topics move away from the personal, toward larger world view and the place of yourself and your loved ones within it, interpersonal with talk of you and I. The scope of your perspective is the current of your speech, and reveals more than your language or vocal affectations.

I could attribute it to the alcohol she was drinking, or the pot she’d obviously smoked, but while the chemicals may contribute, I believe they probably just amplify. I’m inclined to attribute such a response to some adolescent narcissism, some sort of aberration in the cultivation of one’s place in the Grand Scheme, of an expansive social circle, that, regardless of our desire, we are all part of.

The world will keep spinning when you’re gone, babe. Just like when I die. We’re just not that special. What is unique, irreproducible, that which will accompany you all your life and you have the capability of cherishing forever, are is relationship with every one else come in contact with. Not me, not you, but the interaction. There’s far too much insignificance in the world to throw away that which has potential.