This past weekend was Valentine's Day. The particularly interesting part for me is that since I'm not seeing anyone seriously right now, I completely forgot it. Actually, that's not exactly true. My google toolbar changed to hearts, my bug tracker changed to roses and candy hearts, and there were notifications all over the front of my miscellaneous websites. But basically, I just didn't pay attention to any of the signs and Sunday rolls around and I realize that yesterday was Valentine's Day.
What really struck me about this was the concept of shared consciousness and what it’s like to be completely outside it. For example, I remember listening to a story during Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me on NPR right after the last Seinfeld was aired. A guy called up and they were asking him questions about the episode and he had missed the episode to watch the Red Wings in a playoff game. Millions upon millions of people were present to some occurrence (in this case something trivial like the last episode of a TV series) and this individual was completely outside that. I felt a little like that on Sunday. It seems like so much of our society works towards getting everyone to do one thing at any one time, and when you’re outside that, an enormous amount of the mental and emotional energy of the populous goes completely missed by you. Then, when everyone is talking or discussing it, you have no opinion on the matter. Not that it’s a bad thing, just that’s what is.
The one advantage to this, I think, is that you really get to take a fairly objective look at what’s going on. For the Seinfeld guy, he could look around and see the absurdity (or not) of millions of people sitting down to watch a show. For me, it was thinking about all the heartfelt exchanges that happened the previous day, and how I was a part of none of them. This is not depressing for me; it’s just kind of interesting.
D
