post-it notes are people, too.

//this is my [first] editorial [ever] [but hopefully ill do it again next time maybe]. i even get a picture. this makes me sortof excited. except its sortof better here than it is in the paper, because of space. this makes me sortof sad, but o well. still excited about the picture.//

Post-it notes are people, too
I'm probably the most complex, beautiful and interesting person on this campus. Well, maybe on the whole planet.

And so is everyone else.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that we all think that we are all that and some free chips (and some of that really good queso dip from Los Portales). The tricky part is that when we think so nicely about ourselves, we forget to have time to think at all about other people.

I am a busy girl, or maybe just unobservant, so I rarely, if ever, make time to watch TV, and this means I hardly ever know exactly what is happening in the world. So (embarrassingly enough) by the time I figured out what Hurricane Katrina was, it was merely that pesky rain on move-in day. But, then I saw some pictures of the complete destruction that was caused, and suddenly, Katrina was more than all my stuff getting wet when I moved in.

Two days ago, I was looking at the bullitan boards at West Jackson. People were looking for jobs, places to stay and people they left behind. On one blue Post-It note someone was looking for eight people, who seemed to be from one family: Adrian, Tamika, Henry, Melvin, Hope, Lillie, Andrell and Emily. Those are just names. But the moment I stopped to think about them as real, live, breathing, people, they were just that. They were a family. Lillie just lost her first tooth. Henry is saving up for a new video game. Emily's boyfriend just broke up with her. Melvin graduated last spring and is still job-hunting. And I am making all of that up, but the point is: people are more than names or positions or situations or groups or ideals.

How interesting to think that God (that same God who is watching over the whole universe, by the by) does not think of us as names on some Post-it notes taped here and there. He knows that we just got a paper cut that hurts a whole lot, and he knows that we're worried about this and that and the other.

And because he is, we should be too. We ought to be the most genuinely interested-in-others sort of people around. Maybe if we took half a second and learned the names (etc. etc.) of our next-door neighbors, classmates or whomever, it might be easier to invite them over for some chips and that really good queso dip. You never know.

Posted 9/6/2005 5:29 PM