Shady folk.

My lovely Lindsey works at a Starbucks and was recently telling me about how she and the other girls that work there often get hit on by their male patrons. She told me of one customer that was taking it a little too far. This guy singled her out, making comments about how they didn't like the weather and were going to run away to the Caribbean together to escape it.

At Starbucks, it's part of the employees job to be nice and smile and customers. Unfortunately, it seems that there's often a misunderstanding among the customers who misinterpret this corporate responsibility as flirting. Why does this happen? I think there's something more than baristas being flirtatious. I think it shows the loneliness that people feel and the desperation we have for affirming human contact. It's our longing for community.

Our society does not vouch for community, for sharing, for struggling with each other. We are not aware that this is wrong because it's just how we're taught to live. I don't believe that people are meant to live such intensely personal lives. We're built for interaction, for coexistence.

Obviously people live together. We see other people everyday. We're surrounded by people. But we're totally alone. We don't live together. We're all just existing in the same place, we're not living. If people shared their lives with each other, the occurrences of shady (but actually just emotionally lonely) guys hitting on cute (or in this case, downright gorgeous) baristas would decrease and real and pleasant interaction will take place.

Look at the people around you. Check out the people you work/go to school/ride the train with and look for the ones that seem to be trying too hard to fit in. I'd say that the chances are that they're not actually complete losers, but rather they just need someone to treat them in a humane way.

Our society eats people alive in a daily grind of (what ultimately boils down to) greed. Time is the most valuable thing we have. Take 3 seconds to say hi to the people you see around regularly and show them some love that way. It'll make a world of difference to them.