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1.16.2003.
You are so insignificant. Imagine. Everyday you drive to school and pass by hundreds of cars. To you, each of those people is just a car, maybe some crazy freak that you cut off two intersections back, or some slow bastard thats holding you up. They are not people. Just things in your way; a ripple in the stream that is our roadway. People tend to think they are the center of the universe...everything revolves around them, and is there to serve them; this cant be farther from the truth. Picture all the people that you share the road with: the speed demons, the slow drivers, and the clumsy pedestrians. All of them have their own problems and lives. I guess the most profound aspect of this is when we see people in a crowd, whether its on the road or walking on the sidewalk, we see faceless beings, not lives. To us, they are meaningless, and from their perspective, we are nothing but a passerbyer. However, we all have our own ideas, principles (or lack of principles), and problems. Perhaps that is why when we run into people you know in a crowd, maybe you pull up next to them at a stop light, or maybe you run into them in the mall, it is always awkward. You have already characterized everyone in the masses as nonexistant, the backdrop of your life. You are the protaganist, everyone else is an extra. A couple of weeks ago I experienced this for the first time. My brother and I were on our way to school, and the driver in front of us was extremely slow. Despite the fact that there was no one in front of him to impede his progress, he was going well below the speed limit. My brother and I started ridiculing him, throwing out curses and our best comedic material, yet his pace remained steadfastly slow. We seized the first chance we got to pass him, and veered our necks to get a good look at "the slow bastard." Upon inspection, this faceless prop in our life took an identity: it was a man and his daughter, family friends that go to my school. The man has a handicap. I felt so comfortable yelling at this car, goading it to speed up, and never considered the people behind the wheel. This is just an example of how centered we are around our own lives, and how we treat a crowd of people like an inanimate object. My brother and I were silent the rest of the ride.
2.27.03
I was sick today, and did not go to school. Why do we go to school? To learn Shakespeare, Pythagoras, and Avogadro, or is there a deeper purpose? The first schools were institued for the the high class
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