8/2/12 I wonder what it's like to be someone else. To stand outside, twice my age, and smoke a cigarette as I walk by. I must look different than I feel inside. My long hair must look like a symbol of rebellion (instead of laziness). My tight shirt and baggy pants, a symbol of class (and not my forgetting to do the laundry). I suppose, by society's standards, I look like an aspiring failure, or at least a dirty hippy. But maybe that's what I worry I look like. In the few moments it takes to walk passed someone, I'm offered only seconds of shared space and time. Is that loud Texan red neck really a racist asshole? Or worse, am I a pompous elitist to him? Is that woman reading through a stack of papers by the trash can disposing of evidence? Or scrap paper... maybe love letters. It's hard to believe that nobody shares my reality. As simple as it seems, I'm unavoidably unique: Someone else, forced to live my life, would still be a different person. All men are created equal, not identical. And yet I try to see what the stranger sees. What the stranger hears. What the stranger thinks. I know my guess is off, but it's not the truth that matters- it's the acknowledgment of another's reality.
