So, Now That Death is Prementant and All...

Heath Ledger died today. (Or last night; who knows really?) I didn't find out until about 8pm because I was at work; one of my managers got a text message from his wife telling him that one of his favorite actors was now dead. At first we thought it was a joke or something, then a customer overheard us and filled us in on what the world currently knew. And from there I say this:

People are always shocked when someone dies. Whether they knew the person personally or not, they feel some form of remorse and disbelief in the fact that someone's heart has decided to stop beating. I just wonder, why is that? We all will die some day, our bodies aren't made to last forever. Yes, they have become much more durable as time has gone on, but they still will decay and deteriorate. There's no stopping it. Yet we always get a punch in the face whenever someone informs us that another person has died.

How many people out there actually knew Heath Ledger-personally? Like, could walk up to him and have a normal conversation because you grew up with him or whatever? Not anywhere near as many as the hundreds of people who are already forming groups on Myspace and Facebook to commemorate his death. While yes, he was a great actor and I loved a good majority of the movies he was in, I find it hard for me to say that I 'loved him'. I think that, in this instance, we as people, should respect his family and friends enough to let them be the ones who loved him. Because they did.

We can mourn his passing and the fact that the world is now without another soul, but we should give him and his family the respect they deserve and let them be the ones to mourn. They are the ones who knew him best and will feel the vast expanse of emptiness over the next few weeks, months or even years at their loss.

Secondly, would you mourn the person you passed while you walked into your place of employment or schooling if you knew they passed away? Probably not; but why are we raising this one individual onto a pedestal? He was just like everyone else, a person living in this world. Yet we are ranking him in greater importance than that of the 'average joe' that we meet and greet with on a daily basis.

It's late, I had a much better idea for an entry during work today but wrote it in pencil so it wound up all smudged and illegible. Sorry if I offended anyone. (Not that anyone reads this).

High School

This has next to nothing to do with the title, yet it seemed most appropriate to describe what it is I will say here.

We try so hard to fit in and find somewhere that "clicks". You know, that magical place where it just makes sense for you to be a part of that group, club, staff, etc. But until we find that great, mystical place, we wander aimlessly in hopes of finding the said location. And all the while we beg and plead for someone to accept us and take us in. We're like puppies shivering in the cold without a mother to protect us from the oncoming winter storm. And when someone (or that magical place) finally comes along, we follow blindly in the hope that our gut instinct is correct for this fraction of a moment.

It's sad that we have to try that hard to 'fit in'. Whereas, we really shouldn't have to try at all. Everyone already has something in common; we're human. On top of that, we all have hopes, fears, dreams and wants in life. There you have it, another thing in common. Yet we emphasize, (for no reason) stupid little things that must be similar or the same in yourself and another person before a friendship or even acquaintanceship can occur. We dress the same, eat the same things, like the same movie, etc. Yes, these are nice to have in strong, solid friendships, but necessary for basic interaction? No.

We judge everyone, regardless of who they are, well before we actually get to know them. Which is wrong; so wrong. We need to be accepting of one another for who we are. We're all people in a vast world and we all - social standards, ethnic backgrounds, intelligence levels and so on - feel as if we're lost within a sea of faces.

But who am I to say how we should treat one another? I'm just a nineteen year old cashier trying to get through her freshman year of college.

Unconditional Love

All love is unconditional; or so we hope. Otherwise our love and the love of others would have conditions, restrictions, rules and regulations that make us or the other person in question love or love in return another person. Yet we seem to think that love has to be conditional; or much of the world does anyway. Unconditional love, something pure and blameless, is seemingly impossible.

But is it really? I don't think so. Loving everyone, regardless of who they are or where they came from, I believe is something true and possible of every person that walks on the earth. Granted, for some people, to love someone else is almost as if to ask them to sprout wings and fly away. To love like they've never been hurt before. But sometimes, that's where one has to find themselves. To regain the mentality and the knowledge and the ability to love another person.

Not necessarily in an intimate or romantic way, but to love and care about another human being - is that so much to ask? I believe it isn't. We all have the capacity to love and care about one another the same way as we would our family or our most dear of friends, yet we will sometimes treat strangers with blatant disregard and uncaring; then turn around and expect them to show kindness to us. Why is that? Why must we demand to be cared for yet have the audacity to say that we cannot care about another? I think we've become lazy as people. Not just in America, but all over the world.

I hate cell phones. I feel like it's the only way we could continue to divide our social interactions so deeply as it currently has. While I'm trying to ring someone up at Staples, I'm told that, to be at the top of my duties, I should try to carry a conversation with the customer. Yet if the said customer is yapping on their cell phone, they expect me to be able to read their mind. Know that they do indeed have a bonus card and that I should just whip it out for them and make sure the days purchase is acquired to their points. And then they proceed to become irate with me when I swipe their card and get past that section of the transaction so I cannot go back and suddenly, it's my fault. I try to remain calm and nice and friendly about it, but them blaming me for their inability to say "Can you hold on for a second?" to whomever they are currently speaking with so as to take the all of ten seconds to talk to me so I can get the important things out of the way so they can continue the conversation they were having in the first place.

Or, when I apologize to the customer for my "inability" to ask for their bonus card at the beginning of the transaction because, as a child, I was taught to never interrupt someone when they are having a conversation with someone else. I was told to wait until they were finished speaking before asking my question, the customer after them says, "Oh, they're just rude, you did nothing wrong."

If you think about it, we're a very rude culture. We step all over one another and expect someone to always help us, but never do we want to help another. We don't want to say thank you or please, it's just "Give me this now". And it's always now, it's never, 'in a moment', 'now'. As if to wait is to take away precious moments of existence that you would probably be spending in traffic or doing something else unsatisfying.

We praise Thoreau for his book, "Walden", and we quote him constantly on "Simplify, simplify, simplify" and to slow down life and to rush through our lives is to waste the life, yet we run through everything we do. Nothing can be done on it's time; in it's place. The horde of Visa Card users seem to trample us all and scream at anyone getting ready to use a check or pay by cash. We've become impatient and uncaring to one another.

It's sad. That we can't sit back and appreciate another person as such; another person. Another human being that has just as much to deal with as you do. We spend all of our time running over one another that we don't stop to look at the people we're running over. We step on people to get to the top and play and use people in the hopes of 'making it'. But is 'making it' really worth it? Does earning a five-hundred thousand dollar salary really matter if you've destroyed every friendship and social interaction you ever had to get to that point?

We need one another to survive. In order to maintain some form of mental sanity and physical well being, we need to interact and have some form of social connection with another person. Yet we treat people we don't even know like dirt. Heck, sometimes we treat our loved ones like dirt. Why is that? "You only hurt the ones you love"; it's sad, yet true. We do hurt the ones we love far more often then we do the ones we loathe.

This all said, I find it horrifying that my trying to love and care about every person that I come into contact with is considered, "unnatural". People stare at me like I'm crazy when I go out of my way to help someone or to say "I care about you", when I've only known the person for a few days or a few months. But what does that matter? Days, months, years? A person is a person is a person. They all have feelings and wishes and hopes and desires and dreams. Who am I to not care?

Sometimes all people need is someone there.

A Day In The Life

I'm tired of always being the 'younger' person everywhere I go. It makes me feel as if I'm insignificant and unnecessary in conversations and things of the like. Which frustrates me. That; and being sick doesn't help with the current predicaments I find myself in.

Being 19 is awkward, but I know that turning 20 will only be so much more so; I won't be old enough to drink but, at the same time, I'll no longer be considered a 'teenager'. That label will leave me forever, never to return. It's almost like a cheesy, unimportant right of passage. The one everyone overlooks. The big date is when someone turns 21, that's when the said person has the ability and responsibility to drink alcohol legally.

That raises another question; why does it matter so much? I suppose a good deal of it goes towards our view as Americans, that we're already spoiled rotten and that the privilege to consume alcohol is, for some people, not viewed as such. It's more of a recreational activity more than anything. Which is almost disgusting. I pass bars all the time on the way to work and I always wonder if people really do spend a good deal of their time there, like Norm from "Cheers".

There are times where I wonder why I think the way I do. Just the other night one of my coworkers asked what I meant by me saying that my brain is wired completely opposite of everyone else's. What I mean by that is that I feel as if I'm one of the few people left on this planet (at the very least, within this country) with the capacity to care about other people. It's not that I see cruelty everywhere I turn, but I do see a lot of inconsideration and just non-caring by people every day. And it's all because they want someone else to hold their hand and do everything for them. Basic functions that people should be able to handle on a day to day basis it seems cannot be completed because they just plain don't want to perform the said application. It's downright disturbing that we as a nation have become that lazy.

And now for something completely different: I wish I could do more. I have met some people over the past five months that I really do care about more than I do the average Joe walking into the store, but they seem so lost and alone. I want to help them, but options are never presented - what's worse is they're well older than me. So me, a mere "teenager" can do so little (or so it seems) to help a struggling adult. There are thirty-something year old guys working at Staples and it's basically a dead end job for them. I hope and pray that this place I'm at is merely a part time employment; that I won't still be around cashiering ungrateful people five years from now. I hope that I'll move on to bigger and better things, but that hope can only provide me with so much. I suppose that ambition and drive will take me beyond hope will.

It's so cold. And it refuses to snow. Thus, we're left with nothing but a gray sky to welcome our day with bitter cold weather.