All Smiles and Small Talk

In case you were thinking office environment, or casual meetings after reading the title.. that's part of what today's post entails. I have realized that as humans we all may be very different in detail, but when you zoom out and see the big picture, we are all really the same person with the same core mechanism of dealing with things.

How so? Well.. 

Think about it. Why do we smile day in and day out, encourage small talk, sigh, click our tongue and end every conversation with, "Oh well!" or, "I hear ya!" "What ya gonna do?". The answer? Because it's easier to keep things light and fluffy than deal with the heavy and somber reality of things. No one wants a solution; they really just want a pat on the back or an empty reassurance that "it will be okay..", even though nothing may be further from the truth.

And I can somewhat understand. No one wants to be Debbie Downer and waddle in misery and hopelessness. Take it from me, I am stubbornly optimistic and hopelessly idealistic. Yet.. sometimes you need to wake up and smell the coffee so you can proactively react to the challenges before you, both individually and as the human race.

It's the same reason people avoid sticky topics like religion, current news and politics.. no one wants conflict, no one wants confrontation. No one really wants to know the other side of the cookie, the grass on the face of the mountain. No one wants to stare reality in the face, as she can be hideous. They are content with blocking everything out and watching marathons of Pretty Little Liars. Life is so much simpler on fiction TV.. everything resolved in an episode, and people kiss and make-up. Anyway, I digress.

But we all know that's not going to happen. This world is more focused on embellishing fancy band-aids to cover rotting wounds than in actually curing the wounds. For example.. scientists, philosophers and curious people alike want to learn how to live forever, not for the sake of improving humanity of course, just so that they extend their own lives beyond the normal scope. But instead of figuring out how to limit crime, expand education for everyone, or cure common diseases; we are too busy figuring out how to keep wrinkles from creasing skin and body parts from sagging. We are more focused on creating a robotic representation of ourselves, so that our superficial plastic persona can match the outer shell. (Believe me, I am not done with this topic.. it will be discussed in further review later on...)

It sickens me, really.. Hoping that making current people live forever will fix the world's problems is like letting a kid get behind the wheel of a Ferrari going top speed. It won't be pretty. 

Oh sure, we all think we are selfless, and we give ten bucks here and there for a generic charity. We hashtag #prayfor____ after a terrible news story shocks us. But in a few days we are back to the normal routine of asking how the weekend went, making a few comments on the weather, and what's-for-lunch.

I need a vacation.. to another universe.