A friend of mine has a new boyfriend. I got to meet him the other day. Nice looking young man. He had the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen. He seems to be a will-o’-the-wisp, though. He’s very artistic and quite the free spirit. I doubt he’d thrive in a committed relationship, but I don’t think my friend is looking for one. And when my friend asked what I thought of him, I said as much.
Apparently, and this surprised me, I was the only friend who hadn’t brought up the fact that he is black. Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me that that was an issue, or that it should be a point of concern. I’m not going to say I’m color blind. That’s preposterous. Of course I noticed, just as I would notice if someone is short or tall or fat or thin or blonde or brunette. It just doesn’t matter to me.
Is that because I’m open minded? Yeah, maybe, but I think it’s more that I have enough on my plate without focusing on everyone else’s plate as well. I can’t be bothered to judge these things because I have only so much energy to go around. I don’t see myself as some moral yardstick by which other people should be measured. Not only is it none of my business, but I wouldn’t even want it to be my business. I don’t want to be in the busybody business.
So when a coworker was talking to me at shift change the other day, I was in maximum energy conservation mode. We saw two guys in their 30’s walking across the bridge. We see them together all the time. My coworker looked at me and said, “I think those two are funny.” She wasn’t talking funny ha ha, either. So I said to her, “Who cares?” Not because I was trying to pick a fight or teach her a lesson, but because, sincerely, I could care less.
She spent the next ten minutes backpedaling furiously, telling me about all the gay people she’s known and how they were really, really nice. Different, but nice. Really.
The whole time I was thinking that it must be exhausting, trying to force the whole world to comply with your lifestyle. You must bump into jagged moral rocks all the time and get tossed around like an odd sock in a washing machine. Honestly, I could not summon the stamina for that.
So I guess I couldn’t be counted upon to shut down the government, either. I have no desire to force the world to live by my rules, especially when the vast majority of the world makes it clear that they don’t want to do so.
Maybe there’s something to be said for low energy after all.
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