7.17.2009

I often contemplate what it would be like to be someone else. I don't necessarily want to be someone else, however. I only want to think their thoughts and to feel their feelings. I want to know how they hurt and how they love. I want to experience the things that change them for better and for worse. I want to grow with them as a vine upon a house.

When I'm driving down the road or riding in someone else's car, I gaze into each passing car and observe the driver and their passengers. I wonder what their day has been like. I wonder what their life has been like. I think to myself: "Is this the best day of their life? Is this the worst?" For these questions, I wish I had answers. I wish I could stop these people and question them. Though because I cannot, I create my own ideas of these people in my mind. I give them each names and lives; failures and successes; strengths and weaknesses.

I suppose I never really realized just how much I love people until now. I spend so much time complaining about the ignorance of society and the shear lack of intelligence of the human race that I fail to also see the contrary aspects.

This must be why I want to study the subjects that I do. In the fall, along with my final year of high school classes, I will be enrolled in two college courses at Penn State; cultural anthropology and ethics. I want to know as much about people as possible, and thus far in my life I've gained a massive amount of knowledge from experience. I will continue to gain this type of knowledge for as long as I live. However, another type of knowledge is necessary and that is that which I will learn in school when I study psychology and philosophy and ethics and anthropology.