wish I loved its silly face

"People are so different", a friend sighs on the phone.

I sit on my kitchen stove as I talk to her, absently staring out the window. I really need to do the dishes. I have spent the day working and obsessing over the bedspread I want to buy and can't find. Later today, I will interpret a church meeting into a foreign language but I'm not worried. I will also play a volleyball match, but am not worried about that either. I will show up and do these things and not think twice about it.

But I worry and think more than twice about how to deal with my friends. With people in general. Sometimes I find myself wishing to be left alone. Not a healthy thought. But I could do without most of the human race - or so I tend to think, with annoyance.

And then, sometimes, I am hit with such a soul-crushing pity and love for people that my knees almost literally buckle beneath me. It's too much, I can't handle it. I turn away.


“I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I’m introduced to one,
I wish I thought; “WHAT JOLLY FUN!””

(Sir Walter Raleigh 1861-1922)