{"id":86,"date":"2008-05-30T12:35:29","date_gmt":"2008-05-30T17:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/2008\/05\/30\/on-friendly-strangers\/"},"modified":"2008-05-31T00:35:41","modified_gmt":"2008-05-31T05:35:41","slug":"on-friendly-strangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/2008\/05\/30\/on-friendly-strangers\/","title":{"rendered":"On Friendly Strangers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><font color=\"#0000ff\">With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. -Abraham Lincoln.<\/font><\/em><\/p>\n<p>We here, on this planet, are really just friendly strangers. We exist in places: planes, elevators, and bars,- just to name a few- disembodied halves.  In these places where we gather, lives are passed about; jobs, functions, connections, yet sometimes often not,  a name is left out, as if we are strangers meeting on an airplane.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The few times a name is passed about, it&#8217;s tossed into the maelstrom, where we know it will be forgotten. We don&#8217;t even try anymore, saying things like &#8220;I&#8217;ll forget your name in a bit.&#8221;, often at parties and bars, places we are supposed to be social, yet hoping we are quickly forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>We hide.<\/p>\n<p>In the Open.<\/p>\n<p>Only when there is anger is there truth. Because we are taught by society, to be polite, truth is eventually only expressed in anger.  I have heard some express loathing for another, yet hug them and greet them with sugar smiles.  We invite people over to dinner parties whom we would never speak to on airplanes, who we would never give our names.  We tolerate them, because, we know someone they know.  This is true rationalization.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s startling that we die thousands at a time on this planet: Natural disasters, wars, disease and accidents rob the world of millions of us yearly. All gone, not even a memory sometimes.  Converted back to energy and dust.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s this life for we ask? if not to be remembered?<\/p>\n<p>Next time, do more than smile.<br \/>\nCare.<br \/>\nRemember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. -Abraham Lincoln. We here, on this planet, are really just friendly strangers. We exist in places: planes, elevators, and bars,- just to name a few- disembodied halves. In these places where we gather, lives are passed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[282,283],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-lessons","category-truthiness","tag-realization","tag-strangers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}