I see everyone as an opportunity. It’s what humanity is about. Inside everyone there’s a beating heart and a yearning mind aching to get out. People are enraged by everything from politics to dress sense, or from history to video games. The beautiful thing about mankind is that there are so many possibilities to explore. All the people you claim to hate have a list of interests and aspirations both diverse and convergent, and will experience millions of moments in their lives, happy and sad, even nerve-wracking. But it takes an inkling of joy out of me, the thought that for the majority of people, I can’t be a part of that. After all, humanity evolved to be a social race, and our interdependence is key to our survival, and to our happiness.
Something always stops me however, from approaching someone new, from learning about that world of new possibilities, and discovering someone else’s hopes and fears. But then there are moments where I just can’t help but share a smile with a bemused shopper, or a grateful lady unable to pick something up. And in every single one of those moments I’m being fulfilled, a million times over. I could just walk for the rest of my life, bumping into people, and helping people out, because it’s naturally a rewarding experience.
This is where we’ve gone wrong with charities, with politics, with our lives, with our companies, with our schools, with our communities, and on our very doorsteps. It’s apparent to me, that we’ve become individuals so entirely that we’ve been swallowed up into a mass of empty consensus. We have elections, with politicians fighting about issues up in the clouds, without looking down at us, the people they’re supposed to be representing. We have charities that ask us to inanely give money, when the real joy, and the reward of giving, is the experience. We have lives that include only around twenty people, whom we juggle and quickly lose contact with. In the workplace big corporations rule the streets, and we’re simply swollen in the midst of it, stuck, working to live, with no fulfilment. In our schools, we’re failed by teacher’s revisiting subjects they barely passed, and brought to tears by a curriculum that takes minimal account of our individuality. In our community we walk down empty streets, passing people we’ve never met, and on our very doorsteps we’re confronted by the emptiness of another solitary day.
We’re people. We were never meant to be separated, but every single door, every single wall contests that. And now, more than ever, those walls are social. The consensus that means you can’t open your mouth, and that values your opinion, but never asks it.
So this is Echo Blog, asking you to open your mouth, and start talking. We’ll always be listening.
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