Have a psuedo pop-psychology New Year

As I was sitting at a light during yesterday's ride, I thought it would be the neighborly thing to say, "Happy New Year" to the guy sitting two feet away from me on his bike.

He thought the neighborly thing to do was outright ignore me and push on with his ride.

I thought about two things:

1. Why can't we just be nice?

2. Why am I so disaffected about this?

Here's my insightful yet thought-provoking answer to number 1: We can't just be nice.

Here's my equally profound answer to number 2: Because we can't just be nice.

Number 2 was the more disturbing thought, in my opinion. At what point did I start to not care about human rudeness? This kind of thing used to really bother me. On and on I'd rant about this d-bag that ruined my ride/my day/my week. Yesterday I simply continued my ride - a stick with ends too blunted to neither hate nor love. Have I turned into "them"?

Sort of.

We can't "just be nice" and we can't care about other people's niceness
because we're humans. I know this sounds rudimentary and it is. We think that our life is the perfect way to live it and that gives us the right to attempt conversion of our fellow earthlings by bossing them into it.

At least mentally. As my story illustrates, no communication is needed because the less-enlightened should already know. I believe that was the source of the wanna-be world leader at the stoplight.

To move from the dead horse of the stoplight dis, I had probably the worst New Year's eve of my life last night. It was a combination pity party with a side of blame and resentment. Balloon drop at midnight. Champagne toast.

Here's where the philosophical part (and also the cunning intermingling of subjects) comes in. Well, it would if I had one. It's me. It's the rest of the planet. I'm right. I'm wrong. If I ignore everyone at stoplights, everyone will see that they want to be exactly like me. Only they don't because (Here's where the pity party started. It's censored to retain a modicum of self-respect.) *pop*

Was there ever a conclusion? No. Much like this blog entry, it's still hanging around, I'm still wallowing in self-pity/resentment and I'm going to go back to bed. There will be no epiphany, no future bumper sticker. Just me going back to bed and smugly acknowledge that I would never ignore anyone.

Happy New Year and be nice.