strangers on a bus

so "fur eels" (say it fast) (um, ok... faster) (there, you got it.) is my little blog about life, and the complexities of our human condition. before i go on, though, i must confess that it was always my dream to start a band and name us the "fur eels"... would have been the coolest indie rock band ever... never came to fruition, though...and oh wait! it's already been done..( www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJWpAMy1gck ) ..(everytime i have an original idea, it's already been done)..so i'm using the name of a band, which is not my own dream-band, for the name of my new pet blog.

**ahem** back to the matter at hand...my point that i have been thinking about lately is that there are 6 billion people on this sphere, and of that 6 billion, how many people can we honestly say we know much about? we live in our hermetically sealed technology bubbles...sometimes lifting our eyes from our iphones long enough to catch a neighbor's eye.... but generally we are just so absorbed in our texting/gaming/chatting/tv watching/online shopping (guilty)/web surfing. we don't even notice as that quality, (which i shall here after refer to as the "human element") sneaks quietly away from us. how has technology so stealthily begun to replace human voice/touch/thought/kindness/feeling?

but, to be fair, technology isn't the only culprit, i suppose....too often we let our lives lead us along, rather than us leading our lives...we let ourselves get caught up in work, church, school, family, (all worthy pursuits of course) to the extent that we are drained of energy and desire to reach out to others around us. we work with someone for 10 years without knowing anything personal about their lives. we see the same tellers at the gas station every monday, but we don't think to ask their names. we live next door to a new family for months but never introduce ourselves, or welcome them to the neighborhood.

ok that was all kinda dry.....lets get this going here....

so here's my big deal:

everybody has a story. an african proverb says: we were given two ears and only one mouth for a reason; we need to listen twice as much as we speak. so why not go out and listen to peoples' stories, learn from them, laugh with them, cry with them share some real human emotion. some of the best conversations i have ever had in my life were with complete (often scary looking) strangers on a bus or train. i can still recall bits of advice from a suspiciously heroin addicted-looking chick on a bus from provo, utah to salt lake city 12 years ago. and from years before that, i remember the anger burning in a serbian man's eyes as he detailed for me the troubles he had suffered because of "foreigners such as yourself". (imagine a gnarled finger being jabbed in my face as that was said)

here's my plan:

i am going to try and find out something new about a person each day this year and blog about it right here. i will go out of my way to thank/compliment/communicate with people that cross my path each day. i will introduce myself to my neighbors. i will find out more about my family....i will listen and learn something interesting from the people around me, and i will share it here. as i recall past encounters with interesting people i have met i will share them here as well.

just to make it more interesting:

i will take suggestions from all of you on the type of people i should meet and talk to for the week, and suggestions for questions specifically for that person. for example: talk to the garbage man and find out what his favorite foods are. or talk to your neighbor and find out what her greatest accomplishment was. deal is though, that you all should try and do the same, and share here what you have learned. rule is that we have to do it face to face. the very very rare exception is a phone call only if it is impossible to reach the other person face to face. but too many phone calls would really defeat the purpose of getting in touch with the real human element.

i hope this may help us all grin at times, laugh out loud, scratch our heads, look inward, reach outward, and think deeply too. i think it is a very good day indeed when i do most of those things.

*disclaimer: i am not fond of capitialization (OVERRATED) (see what i mean?) and sometimes i don't have time for proper punctuation.....and typos will happen...but we can still be friends, right? oh and sometimes my thoughts may come out unclear...and garbled...deal with it! (please)