Only Odd
Has it ever struck you that nobody pays attention to the "normal" anymore? Today, as I was going about my business, it occured to me that people rarely, if ever, stop to observe the "obvious." Why is it that if we come upon someone new in the coffee shop, they instantly command our attention, while we don't take the time to reevaluate the regulars?
Most of the time after you've know somebody for long enough we stop observing them like we do the people we haven't known for long. Now I know that i'm not saying anything new here, far from it, but let me get to my point. I was browsing through Myspace today and looking at someone's page that i thought i knew relatively well, when i took a look at his friends list. I was surprised to find that i knew only a handful of his contacts. I have known this person for years and we have been like family for some time, yet i knew only a few of the people he had on his friends list. This made me stop momentarily to ask myself where did he meet all of these people, and how is it that i havent even heard of most of them? The answer to this is quite simple, if overlooked; I havent been paying attention. Only the oddities catch my eye. Those few people that we both know were all that we focused conversation around, and consequently i missed the rest of his aquaintances because i wasn't paying attention to what my friend was doing.
The point is this. I'm in a war zone and have the time to think about all of the trivialities of life whenever i'm not getting shot at, so I came to a realization that I need to pay more attention to the things I thought I had figured out. The oddities are easy to catch, but maybe we should take a little time to focus on the normal, just in case we've missed something. People are precious, but we take them for granted constantly. You never know, perhaps tomorow you'll realize that the friend you thought you had, isn't who you thought he was. Or worse maybe you'll lose him to circumstance and not get the second opportunity to really get close. We shouldn't get too caught up with ourselves that we lose touch with the people closest to us.
