I am wondering if I’m turning into a cry baby.
One of my courses has me studying and reading an online blog - a new method of user research in which participants maintain an online daily journal and share their life, their views. This particular study was on understanding notions surrounding health and food choice.
While this may sound very dry, and I must confess I felt pretty weighed down after being handed 500 pages of research data to read, but this stuff has me crying every few pages.
People can be so candid and honest in faceless environments... perhaps in the past year I’ve had so few "real conversations" (as in I don't remember the last time I had a lump in my throat after a conversation with a friend). Suddenly this influx of truth and unadulterated emotion and confession has me choked!
People were so forthright and honest with all the details of their life - the crazy little problems that bugged them everyday, dilemmas surrounding BIG challenges in their lives, very sad moments, moments to remember... stories about having to care for their little child who is suddenly very ill, caring a family member with a mental disability, the death of a close friend, cancer, pregnancy, eating when upset, eating to celebrate... etc.
The lives of these people seemed 'closer to the ground'. And I definitely do not mean this in a bad way. I mean I realized that since I have not had to deeply care for another person/creature and take care of anybody on a daily basis, my daily/life goals are mostly oblique. Nothing seems too scary or too urgent. Time is always on my side, and I rarely feel that I actually have something to loose. Motives and reasons for my daily actions are luke-warm.
And so I cried.
Not out of sadness but a strange relief.
We really aren’t as selfish as we are taught to believe we are... we actually perhaps function much better when we need to take care of someone (anyone, even a pet)
And then I cried again, because I missed Shadow.
Which brings me back to the beginning...
