Sunday, June 17, 2018

People Are Exhausting... And Yet

I finally made it to London, a few months ago, solving the problem by taking all my family with me.  It was hard and wonderful and exhausting and awesome. London is probably not my soul's city as I thought it might be, which was a little sad to realize, but better to know, right?

One of the things I've been pondering since the trip is how strange it was to be around such... distant people. Unfriendly isn't the right term, because I could always ask someone for help if I needed to, but people generally ignored each other in public.

I don't remember noticing this in New York. I'm not sure if it's because I felt familiar with the pace there, having lived there when I was young, or because we were always in such busy areas it wasn't obvious. Probably the later. Walking around a residential neighborhood in London, the lack of acknowledging nods/smiles was really obvious.

And if you'd asked me how I'd feel about that, I probably would have said it would be great! Because having to put on friendly normalcy can be really hard at times. And yet, I really found it weird, and lonely.

This came up for me today, because I bought shirts for me and my son that say, "People are Exhausting."   And I almost wore mine today and then I realized, it might stop people from making casual chit-chat with me. And though I hate obligatory "how are you"s, I like a bit of chit-chat. I've gotten good enough at it that it's a pretty small outlay of energy, as long as I'm in an okay frame of mind, and in return I get to feel some harmony with the people around me. It makes the world feel more comfortable.

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