The world through rosy-coloured...uh, contacts

(written earlier yesterday during UA 837 from SFO to Narita)

I like to think that I've always been jaded about the world. Spending your formulative years in, okay, near the mean streets of West Philadelphia can do that to you. So can watching someone get shot right in front of your house in said neighbourhood. And how about watching not one, but two women get mugged across the street during your friend's housewarming party? Okay, enough dramatic scenarios, that's not what this post is about. My point is, in reality, I think I've always viewed the world through rosy-coloured contacts. We may have been through tough times in my family, but for the most part, the part of the world I was exposed to was pretty sanitized. People around me growing up had nannies and summer homes, and "trouble" at school was if you wore nail polish by accident (or on purpose) or if your uniform skirt was hiked up too high, not guns or kids killing each other. As for the people in my life, I never realized this, but they were all really really nice. And of course, I mean people just beyond my immediate family (who really have no choice but to be nice to me), but friends, teachers, co-workers, bosses, acquaintances. Hell, even the baristas at Starbucks are pretty darn nice. All this had led me to come to understanding that I'm really just naive, and not jaded about the world.

Not too long ago, I had my first experience with disappointment in humanity. No, not like in Crash where you felt sickened by the racism or ignorance, but more like in a "wow-I-can't-believe-people-really-can-be-mean-in-certain-aspects-
and-still-look-pretty-normal-and-nice-on-a-day-to-day basis" kind of way. I guess I've just been lucky that I've never been exposed to any real "mean-ness", let alone someone who can rationalize that there was nothing wrong with it. It sort of just hits you like a brick, and then you realize that you've been watching yourself in a slow-motion trainwreck the whole time---you just had no power to stop it. Many would say that I brought this onto myself and let it continue longer than it should have, but in retrospect, I don't think I could have prevented any of it, except not to have started it at all. It's funny how your view can go from a most amazing experience to realizing that there never was a relationship to begin with. It's like someone once said, a relationship is like magic--all it takes is one person to stop believing, and it's as if it never existed at all. No, I don't have any regrets, just a lot of great experiences; regrets aren't really my style anyway.

But I did make one change to my life: I'm wearing glasses today.