It’s summertime and there’s something in the air.
Is it love, is it the scent of full bloomed fauna, or is it the smell of the cow pasture that hangs in your nose as you go down the highway?
This is one of the many contradictions of this life. For instance, the idea of being an individual, just like everyone else: from my observations, people aren’t that different.
They have similar wants, needs, desires and dislikes, and, deep down, it’s all the same little cave dweller who doesn’t want to die alone.
Understanding people isn’t that complex. Everyone is afraid of something. Most people are afraid of one of two things: fear of a premature death or fear of being unloved (or both).
On top of this is built our desires. If we fear death, we strive to accomplish goals to attain longer life for ourselves (and shy away from those that might shorten it). If we fear being alone, we may do whatever is necessary to belong. Of course, everyone doesn’t fall into these neat categories, and it would be a minor disservice to human kind to assert such.
Humanity is more complex (in its own mind) than can be simply put into minute categories. For even though “no man is an island,” everyone does their utmost to make sure they have the tallest fence.
Some people are even offended when another person implies that they have had a similar experience, or at least understand a person’s feelings. How many times have you tried to share a life-altering experience, only to be confronted by, “You can’t possibly understand how I feel! No one does!”
Perhaps in our ever-more assimilated, connected, conformist world, our problems seem to be our only vestige of individuality. At least my life is worse than so-and-so’s, right? Maybe the only thing we have left to cling to in our pitifully similar lives is the problems that we hold to ourselves.
That’s why comedians do so well. People laugh at that which they fear lies within themselves. The basis of comedy: at least it isn’t me. Tragedy tells us to feel sorry that someone has a bad experience and instructs us to enjoy the fact that it is happening to someone else.
Yet, that is human nature.
Perhaps man is noble, graceful and selfless; or he may just be deceiving himself. Maybe he just tells himself that so what man really is won’t come out and bite him in the face. Man is just an animal that thinks highly of himself, and has the ability to express it.
Great achievement – man, the whiney beast.
I leave you with this thought: The world is what you make it, and no one wants to make it by themselves.
Oh, and before you get any ideas about angry letters to the editor, understand this: The author does not consider himself exempt from this derision of the human race.

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