Big City Life Callouses Your Reactions
As I was working on a few Hinda-related projects here in Starbucks tonight, I was chilling out on a couch next to a fireplace drinking a hot mocha. On a crisp fall day like today, it was a welcome change of scenery. After all, my internet is basically non-existent (thanks Clear) so I'm forced to take my netbook to a free wi-fi spot in the meantime. Interestingly enough, my scenery tends to get interesting.
This particular Starbucks is across the street from one of the few "sketch" corners of Wrigelyville. As the people sat in the shop reading or working on their respective laptops, a random fellow came in and starting yelling up a storm. He started cussing the Starbucks employees out and made sure everyone within an earshot that he was in the Navy once and how he wasn't talking to anyone in particular. But he was talking.
Back home this would've been something that would've been the "talk of the town" for at least a week. It may have even made the Region section of the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer. Being where this Starbucks in relation to other places, nobody in the store (myself included) even flinched. We all stopped, looked up, made sure safety wasn't being threatened and went about our business.
The event made me realize how callous I've become to what's around me. Things that would've shocked me a couple of years ago don't even make me blink now. It's weird how a change of scenery will do that for someone.
I don't know what made that guy want to come in and feel to cuss us all out. He may have been on something or just lonely and that's the only way he could get anybody to pay attention to him. After seeing the homeless or needy every day walking to work, they tend to blend into the scenery after a while. I am nearly ashamed to admit that I notice them any more than the house I pass on the corner everyday walking to the train or the Dunkin Donuts at the train station. I know it's there but it doesn't affect me at all.
Callousing up to things is good in a lot of ways. It keeps me from taking certain things more in stride and relaxing a bit more, not worried about as much. There is a downside to this callousness. People with real needs and loneliness will eventually blend in. Instead of people they become part of the scenery, going unnoticed by those who walk by everyday (myself included). Instead of loving on them and treating those like humans, we breeze on by without even thinking twice.
After being ignored that often, I reckon that's when the "scenery" does outrageous stuff like walk into Starbucks and cuss out a roomful of people before storming out.