People! People! People!

What creatures of manipulating other people-creatures into states of anxiety, stress. frustration and sometimes generalized angst.  And that is phrasing it mildly.

People who drive their vehicles on  a twenty-five mile per hour street at sixty and sometimes eighty miles per hour, (its math, simple math: when the driver covers a specific number of yards in specific seconds, I know their speed.), with their face down, hand and/ or hands on a phone or tablet, with glow of phone or tablet  coloring their face, for tenths, as in plural tenths, sometimes several tenths of a mile, I find my condition is stressed, anxiety, and occasionally terror, sheer terror.

The terror takes over when I see a child with the neglectful driver. Or an animal in the back of their pick-up or being towed in a horse trailer. Eeek.

That they never see me is another alarm.

Then there are the people who insist on interjecting themselves into my world. Pushing, pushing, pushing.  “I want to see you, now.” or, “I want us to do XY and Z now.” They say.

They say words and words and words about them, what they want, what they got, how much they weigh or don’t weigh. what they or doing or not doing and why they are doing or not doing it. Sometimes their words make them sound like they are quite shallow of personality.

Of no interest or concern to them is how I might feel.  Maybe, I want to be a hermit for a small segment of time. Or what I want. Or when or if I might want it or this or that or XY and Z.

Also of no interest to them,  is me, really, me. Do they know my favourite colour this month? Or my favourite Holiday? Do they know the story behind the real me this last six months or so? Do they know my goals or aspirations? Or my deepest reasoning of complex subjects?

Do they know my ‘non-them’ relationships and my interests or concerns there? Do they know the whats or whys or hows, I contemplate?

Do they sometimes, too frequently, sound like a petulant, pouting, whining, self-absorbed person? Yes to each and all of those.

But. There is that Corinthian admonition: Love never fails. I try to remember that.

Even though all of these people, the ones who text and drive, speed carelessly and dangerously, are the same as the self-absorbed, shallow people who are all about themselves.