Showers... Car Washes... Freeways

I believe I should start off with a little apology for letting almost a month pass without a post or even a few words to explain how busy I have been. Now it is Thanksgiving break and I have finally recovered from an exhausting all-nighter working on the most difficult paper I have attempted. It turned out really well though I had the misfortune of believing that I needed to write 5 - 7 pages single spaced when the requirement stated the paper was to be double spaced. After handing it in I napped for 16 hours and I really needed a good rest after working myself so hard.

My post today actually begins after my sixteen hour "nap." For those of you that don't know this about me, I take very long showers. I was sore and still mostly asleep so this shower was dragging on to thirty minutes by the time I put shampoo in my hair. About this same time another one of my hall mates decided it was time for his shower. He looked like he had just woken up as well but I was shocked by his efficiency getting in. Of course any of you that have spent any time in a male dorm/residence hall will know that the first thing you notice when someone else gets in the shower is how it smells like they are literally bathing in cologne and the kid next to me was no exception. I happened to casually glance at him as I turned around in the stall and I saw that in the minute it had taken me to put shampoo in my hair, he had already started the water and started to wash himself from head down. A few minutes later as I was finally getting the last bit of soap out of my hair, I heard the water go off and in the next ten seconds he was dressed and gone. The shock of seeing someone get in and out of the shower in the same time it took for me to get soap in and out of my hair kept me standing, staring blankly at the wall for five minutes. It hardly seemed like he had taken a shower. It was more like he had just walked through an automatic car wash.

This morning in the shower I was thinking about it again, his incredible efficiency and speed in his morning routine. As I pondered it and how different it was from my own luxurious and time consuming showers I wondered if his way of showering, car wash style, meant that he really thought nothing more of his body than he would a car. Obviously the technique used was the same, spray with lots of water and soap then start from the top and work your way down and finally dry as quickly as possible to avoid spots and hard water stains. I hoped it certainly wasn't the case because how sad would it be for people to think of their bodies as nothing more than vehicles. They certainly are not as replaceable as cars and we get them for free, but they are also all that we are. Really if you take away our bodies what do we have?

But what I see is that many people do believe that all we are is the mind and that our body is just a car or bike we are chained to. I'm sure most people wish they could trade theirs in and pay a little extra for a better one too. It certainly makes a lot of sense to think that way about it. After all the human body is just a complex machine that needs fuel and maintenance just like any other; and in many ways it's just a computer as well. In essence it's a high tech car that transports and does the bidding of our soul.

It's an incredibly appealing idea too, because in our cars we are alone, completely alone; we can be who we want to be and do what we want. We're in complete control of how far we go and how fast we get there. And in the absolute solitude of our car we can be ourselves, whether that means singing, cursing out the rest of civilization, blanking out for a while, contemplating what we want to do with the rest of our day or just drive to escape everything we want to forget. Who wouldn't want to be able to just plug in some headphones for awhile so they could just be alone and be themselves, if only in their heads.

Have you ever looked at people in their cars, just while you are driving by? I don't drive a lot and I spend a lot of my time as a passenger looking out the windows, and one of the things I have noticed is that even though people on the road may only be a few feet away from you and only separated by two walls, they are in a world that is entirely their own. I wave my hands back and forth, bounce up and down in my seat, make faces and act like a child just to get their attention and to try and have some communication, but the drivers are always stuck in their own worlds. They are too busy singing along, talking to someone on the phone or just zoning out for awhile to pay attention to my antics, too caught up to even see me even though all I want is to be noticed.

It really upsets me when this same thing happens in life, when I'm on campus or walking to church and people just pass me by without a nod or a smile, like I'm a ghost. It's just like passing cars on the freeway; they don't see me, they don't care about me unless I'm about to run into them, they just want to be themselves, but only in their heads. I think people should be who they want to be, but I don't want to be ignored. I really want the drivers, and the people on the street to smile back. I just don't want to live in a world that is just a freeway, where people pass each other all the time, but never really notice who's sitting just a few feet away.