Let's Not Be Ants
I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant. You know?
I mean, it's like we go through life...
with our antennas bouncing off one other,
continuously on ant autopilot,
with nothing really human required of us.
Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there.
All action basically for survival.
All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along...
in an efficient, polite manner.
" Here's your change." " Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?"
"You want ketchup with that?"
I don't want a straw. I want real human moments.
I want to see you. I want you to see me.
I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, I know.
Susan is leaving the company I work for. She's been here for 11 years and I'm barely even sure that that's her real name. I only know that because I've described her to someone who said "that sounds like Susan blahblah".
Anyway, if you havn't heard my diatribe about the office "how are you? good and you?" here's the short of it - I fucking hate it. Don't ask me if you don't care. If you don't want to hear that I'm pms'ing, drank too much and slept on the floor, my dog puked and i have a wierd rash on my leg then dont' ask. I now answer the question robotically with "super".
I asked Susan how her Labor day weekend was. We had been long "good and you?" friends since we use the same bathroom. Never shared a real word before. Her weekend was awful - her boyfriend of two years told her two days before he left that he was going to Barbados with his "new girlfriend". While at his house her $1200 mountain bike got stolen off her bike rack which she only got so she could go mountain biking with him. She needed to vent.
Thank you for keeping it real, yo.
There don't seem to be too many people that care about some one who they don't really know - but we all have lives outside of work and problems and heart aches and successes and loves. Don't ask if you don't care. If you care and you do ask, then really listen - we all need some one to listen once in a while.
I'll miss you Susan (?).
posted by chinchilla @ 9:21 AM
1 Comments:
This is a nice sentiment but.... The ant-like hi-how-are-you is a necessary byproduct of living in a large society - there has to be a protocol for acknowledging people you're dealing with or else no one would say anything and it'd be hard to get the ball rolling on any conversation with a stranger. It takes time to get to that next level of conversation because you need some familiarity and trust between you that only comes with time and repetitive interactions, and only then will someone spill their guts to you about something they don't consider public knowledge. Imagine if Susan told you what she told you just now the first time you met her. And what if the first time you met her was not at the office but as you passed her on an empty street. It'd be strange and you'd probably think she's crazy. You may not be all buddy buddy with her now, but you've seen each other enough to be reasonably comfortable and are thus able to move beyond the automatic part of the conversation.
Then there's the "you'd rather not know" factor (the YDRNK factor?). Some people are inherently empathic and care about the ills of others but even in those cases there are things they'd probably rather not know about at all because these can contradict their deeply held convictions about life, universe and everything or disparage the people they hold in high esteem.
Not to mention that nothing would ever get done. You'd be at Walmart, lecturing the cashiers about birth control, or talking the dentist out of suicide, or consoling the gas station attendant because he got the clap. The post office would be even more intolerably slow.
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