People are cool

So first off, let me apologize for making it a slow blog month. I had a bit of blogger's malaise. Can't say I'm over it, but I was thinking about this today, and thought I'd share it.

People are cool. At my workplace, there are pictures of people around Chicago, not really doing anything; there's a picture of a Hasidic Jewish family (with a beautiful little kid) sitting in Union Station. There's a steelworker looking at something work-related off camera. There's a fat guy screaming out his orders on the trading floor of the Merck. There's an old man bowing his head before the wind on a cold, blustery day (hmmm, haven't seen much of that lately, have we?). Just pictures of people. Complex and different. Diverse and unique.

And then I look at all the people out on the roads. Take a drive down a highway at rush hour (I don't, I take the train, but work with me). Look at all the cars coming at you the other way. Each one has at least one person in there, possibly more. Each of those hundreds, if not thousands, of people has a story as complex as your own. Maybe a little more or less eventful, but they have the same ups and downs and cool stories and quirky relatives and aspirations and dreams and regrets and needs as you do. And that's only a fraction of people in this metropolitan area. Then there are the millions of people in other individual cities across the globe. Thinking about one city is mind-boggling enough, thinking of another specific one is even moreso.

It has been going through my mind lately: people are cool. Yes, people have their crap. You do, I do, someone else does. Not everybody lives to their potential, and a lot of people live in a half-stupor (yes, I'm speaking from personal experience). But when you open your eyes and see the world, how it's created, how the people in it live, thrive and survive in it, it's freakin' wonderful.

And yes, it's an epiphany, but it doesn't keep me loving everybody all the time. Just more appreciative of them.