The People Problem

Recently, I picked up a novel by the vlogbrother/nerdfighter/author John Green, a person who I am convinced knows more about people than his self-refuting claims would suggest. The novel, Paper Towns, is a story about a boy who spends his whole life in a crush with a girl, only to find out that he doesn't know her at all. This boy (Quentin Jacobsen) is therefore confused when she (Margo Roth Spiegelman) runs away for apparently no reason. He is so obsessed with finding her and convincing her to fall in love with him that he starts a search that leads from Walt Whitman's Song for Myself to several abandoned subdivisions outside of Orlando. Eventually, the search leads him to understand that he has been viewing other people as "paper people", or objects with only two dimensions. He learns that we need to view people as we view ourselves--trying to, as Whitman said, become the person. But since we can't actually become the person, we need to ask the person questions to figure out what's going on.

To put it kind of flatly, this novel changed my perspective on people. Individuals who I originally dismissed as crazy, creepers, idiots, or jerks are now being reassessed. I am, to use a colloquial term, "floored" by this new discovery. To my surprise, thinking of people as people and not as static objects that always do what you tell them is actually a really interesting way of going about life. Time consuming, but interesting.

A quote from a movie trailer that I once saw: "I like stereotyping. It's more efficient." Personally, I find it kind of sickening to think that we constrain people to one particular group or path in life because it's more convenient to us. The whole point of being a gentleman is to be in an inconvenient situation for someone important to you. I would argue that that's the whole point of love, but then again, I suck at love, so don't take my advice.

But about that point of love...if you argue against that? I'd say becoming mortal for 30 years, memorizing the Torah, being rejected by your own people to the point of being crucified, and being betrayed from several of your closest followers would be a great inconvenience to some people. Jesus made a huge point of being inconvenienced for us, and why? Because He loves us.

I dunno. Like I said, I kinda suck at the whole relationships thing. So if you take my advice, don't be surprised if you end up a loner like me. Not that you'd take my advice anyway, since anyone reading this would probably know me well enough to understand that in advance.

Here's to a life of making our comfort zones other peoples',

--JesusFreak