I clacked past some variety of pinkish wild daisy waltzing in Reno's perfect morning and up the stairs of grand Victorian-style home-turned-doctors’-office. In doing so, I passed one of the many elderly couples I encounter during my workday.
Good morning! I called out as the clear grey of my eyes made contact with the milky grey of the man’s, issuing the couple a smile that matched the tone in my voice.
He on oxygen and she with her arm in a sling, they both flashed their dentures at me, cheerfully responding to my greeting.
We continued on past each other and I found myself thinking, People are so wonderful.
And then I stopped walking.
People are so wonderful?! What the heck is wrong with me? People drive me nuts! As a general rule I can’t stand people. I wish people would stay away. I wish I had the road to myself. That I didn’t have to overhear complaining in airport lines. That my day wasn’t peppered with sounds of patients’ kvetching. Or nosy grocery clerks. Or HOAs. Or clearly unhappy office staff. And so many other things.
Sartre whacked the nail on its proverbial head: Hell is other people. (En français: L'enfer, c'est les autres.)
Except for when it’s not. For apparently, a minute encounter with two social security recipients can induce a genuine smile and remind me to be grateful that I do what I do for a living. Appreciate that I can almost guarantee that at least one of those patients is on one of the cardiovascular medications I sell, and it is literally serving to extend their lives, making it such that they will be able to encounter other drug reps, other passersby, and cause them to smile as they note a couple still together through the thick of it, the thin, the fractured, the decrepit, and the deteriorating.
Rather than People are so wonderful (for it really isn’t true), perhaps I should have thought, These people are so wonderful, and continued walking, comfortable in my appreciation of that single small meeting, momentarily disregarding the rest.
Good morning! I called out as the clear grey of my eyes made contact with the milky grey of the man’s, issuing the couple a smile that matched the tone in my voice.
He on oxygen and she with her arm in a sling, they both flashed their dentures at me, cheerfully responding to my greeting.
We continued on past each other and I found myself thinking, People are so wonderful.
And then I stopped walking.
People are so wonderful?! What the heck is wrong with me? People drive me nuts! As a general rule I can’t stand people. I wish people would stay away. I wish I had the road to myself. That I didn’t have to overhear complaining in airport lines. That my day wasn’t peppered with sounds of patients’ kvetching. Or nosy grocery clerks. Or HOAs. Or clearly unhappy office staff. And so many other things.
Sartre whacked the nail on its proverbial head: Hell is other people. (En français: L'enfer, c'est les autres.)
Except for when it’s not. For apparently, a minute encounter with two social security recipients can induce a genuine smile and remind me to be grateful that I do what I do for a living. Appreciate that I can almost guarantee that at least one of those patients is on one of the cardiovascular medications I sell, and it is literally serving to extend their lives, making it such that they will be able to encounter other drug reps, other passersby, and cause them to smile as they note a couple still together through the thick of it, the thin, the fractured, the decrepit, and the deteriorating.
Rather than People are so wonderful (for it really isn’t true), perhaps I should have thought, These people are so wonderful, and continued walking, comfortable in my appreciation of that single small meeting, momentarily disregarding the rest.
1 comments:
all people are definitely not wonderful. agreed. although, i'm kind of glad everyone isn't wonderful all the time because then life would be like a silly disney movie (prior to the bad guy) all the time. lame.
also, because i do what i'm told by bloggers i don't know and whose recipes i hope to continue to enjoy: "smarten up and use those contact lenses 'as directed'"
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