De-antified

You know those times when you're walking around in the store and you see someone you know, but instead of greeting them you pretend like you don't see them? And it's not necessarily because you don't like that person or anything, you're just not used to seeing them outside of the normal context you've always known them in. It's almost like you are afraid to let them see you in a different light, like you're a completely different person.

I never greet people that I happen across unless I am particular friends with them. It probably has to do with my shyness, but also just a fear of the unexpected and foreign. If by chance they notice me and call out to me, I'll of course stop and go through the pleasantries before we part ways again, but it always seems so unreal plastic, trapped inside of a little box labeled formality.

I ventured out yesterday. I went the store to buy a few groceries, and on my way in I noticed that one of the employees was someone I knew from youth group. At fist I did was I normally did: pretend I didn't see him and kept on walking. But then, perhaps merely prompted by this very assignment, I took the next opportunity I had to greet him.

It wasn't awkward like I thought it would be. We asked each other the same sort of questions you would anytime you ran into someone randomly, but this time it wasn't just for the sake of being polite. It was a genuine conversation, not one that ran just skin-deep.

We still aren't that great of friends and we don't see each other often, but now I feel like there's more of a potential friendship than there was before. Perhaps this will encourage me to do the same with anyone else I come across in the future.

~Scribbles