I love listening to other people talk to each other. There’s a guy and a girl in the back corner of the coffee shop that I’m sitting in to supposedly do homework, and I totally got distracted by their conversation. They started by talking about music and they sound so pretentious. Like they’re so brilliant and they hold all the secrets to society. Then they moved onto phrases they’d picked up from shows and movies. He’s kinda dopey looking, with light brown hair that is short and rests flat on his head and in a black t-shirt, I think from a band or a movie. I can’t really see her without staring, but she has brown hair with the dyed red tint, a brownish suede looking jacket and is wearing jeans. The tone of their voices just sounds so ridiculously like the thoughtful tone acquired by those in movies who are poets or artists and work to make people think about their lives because they are so ‘thoughtful’. I know that I’m being quite judgmental, but I can’t help it. They sound like they should be wearing yuppie thrift-store clothes and sitting in a coffee shop in a movie debating the what the biggest downfall of society as we know it is. They should be in a movie from Kevin Smith. Apparently they’re 20 because they were just talking about how they want to be 21 because 20 is nothing and 21 they can go to Vegas and play the slot machines. They’ll find out soon enough that 21 and slot machines aren’t really that cool either and they’ll come back and sit in another coffee shop on another day discussing the faults of our society that their 21 and so much wiser selves will have found still exist and by the time they’re 25 they’ll be jaded and continue on their pretentious rants about the faults and shortcomings of the world we live in.
It’s funny, but they make me hopeful for tomorrow, because there will always be those who sit around in coffee shops and think that they, and they alone can see the world for the crappy place that it is and that by discussing its faults in coffee shops they’ll be that much better for it. I love how as we all grow we see that as much as everything changes, there’s still so much that’s consistent. Everything may change in the 21st century and maybe we have to be ready for it, but there will still be those things that are consistent. Because we all share some very common characteristics. It is these shared traits that make me hopeful for humanity in the long run, even the bad ones, because in these lie what guides us and provides the entry points for hope and salvation. As annoying as people can be, they are fantastic.