JSYK40: A Good Mulling Over

Have you ever thought about people? It’s hard to truly think about them because there are so many of them to think about. When I say people, I don’t mean stereotypes, either. I mean every single separate person interacting uniquely with every single person around them. Stop and think about your sister, the mailman, the local sandwich shop owner, the mayor of a neighboring town, the principal from Washington D.C, the president’s wife, the queen of England’s nephew, the little boy living in North Korea. Don’t think about what everyone thinks of them. Think about how they feel every day when the sun comes up. Think about what makes the laugh and cry and who they hold close to their heart. Imagine all those feelings going on outside your realm of consciousness. Imagine the feeling of ^{getting a letter in the mail}, the feeling of _{stubbing your toe}, the feeling of ^{getting a job}, the feeling of _{losing your house}, the feeling of ^{laughing with your best friend}, the feeling of _{moving away from your home town}, the feeling of ^{your mother reading to you}, the feeling of _{your father leaving for good}, the feeling of ^{watching a crowd lift their hands in humility and praise}, the feeling of _{hiding from the ones who govern your life}, the feeling of ^{seeing your sister when she came home from the hospital for the first time}, the feeling of _{seeing your brother shot before your very eyes}, the feeling of ^{your country winning a war it has been fighting for years}, the feeling of _{watching a plane collide with a national landmark}, and the feeling of being kissed for the very first time. All of these feelings and so many more stuffed inside every single person that ever walked this earth, but you hardly ever see them. All you see is a face and an action and an opinion. I get so caught up, sometimes, in the horror and the fear of mankind. I’m frightened what one man is able to do to another when there are so many feelings, so many unknowns inside each person. I get lost in the hopelessness of thinking that the only thing that remains in the human soul is the drive for personal gain and nothing more, and I’m constantly bombarded with proof that no truly good person exists, or ever has existed, and I cannot even count myself among the shameless. How can the unimaginably terrible occur? Why is it that anyone is ever allowed to smile, to be happy, or to feel joy? But every time a person surprises me out of my stereotypical thinking, every time a person opens up to me, every time I stop to think that, with all the thoughts running through my head, there are about a million more just in the person sitting next to me in biology class, it becomes painfully obvious to me that I haven’t figured out one iota of humanity. Heck, I can’t even figure out my little brother most of the time. That is neither frightening nor comforting to me, but rather mind blowing to understand that no one will ever have everyone figured out. I want so badly to understand someone, or even to understand myself. I have gotten nowhere writing this all down…