An internal monologue

I was talking with my roommate last night and decided that life sould be like a TV show, particularly something similar to Grey's Anatomy. I want to wake up each morning, walk around the streets of town, sit at work or lunch, talk with friends, and be able to have this internal monologue airing loudly over my head and nobody can hear it. Just me.

I want to be able to endure each day when my only real problems involve sex and relationships and where money is not a problem.

I want to be able to lay my head to my pillow each night and not have bigger problems on my mind, like where my next car or rent payment will come from, or how tight the month's budget will be.

It seems like each character doesn't live the life of the real person. These images, these characters are merely figments of someone's imagination, forsaking reality for interest, leaving real life in the dust to speed along a highway of a dreamland where bills and money don't matter. That's not real life. It's just TV.

I was thinking this afternoon that most of humanity these days has lost a great deal of innocence and reality, humility and respect. Every day people drive to work, to the store, to clubs and bars and parties, and back home. Scratch that. They don't drive. They race. Race to the top. Ten, fifteen, twenty miles over the speed limit. Walking faster and faster through the store, down the street, through the office, not stopping to smell the flowers, admire the trees or the mountains, see the clouds. Too many people these days have lost the sence of wonderment that we all posessed as children. They no longer stop to make a new friend or to help the little old lady get that box off the top shelf. Put your blinders on and keep on walking.

I want to go back to a time when people were polite, when the driver to your left wasn't angry, laying on the horn, flipping the bird at the car behind him. I want to go back to the days when everyone was innocent, when exceptions were made, when humanity, humbleness, and innocence prospered.

That was the same time when having a BA could guarantee you a job, set for life, and rapid vertical movement within a company, just because you spent four years studying more than anyone else. Now, it just makes you as ordinary as everybody else. Experience doesn't stand a chance anymore; it's about how much money you've shelled out to pay for different letters in the title: MA or Ph.D.

In just a few moments, I'm going to leave for the bar with my roommate. I'm going to drive about ten miles over the speed limit on the highway. I'm going to have a few beers, and we're going to come home. I know I shouldn't, because the real human problem bouncing through my mind all night will tell me money is tight and I shouldn't be out spending. And when I come home, my head will hit the pillow, and I'll still wonder how I'm going to pay for new contacts and my car registration next month, on top of my rent, car, and student loan payments.

I'm going to go to bed tonight as a real human. Not a character. Because I have real problems, real worries, and a real life.