“Nikky Vision”

I’ll admit it: I can some­times get too involved with work and my own life that I can for­get that I’m not just one per­son in this world, but a being liv­ing in a col­lec­tive estab­lish­ment known as a city. And not just any city, but a pop­u­la­tion cen­ter in world-class city.

When this hap­pens, I get some­thing I call “Nikky Vision,” which is almost self-descriptive in nature. Every­thing else–societal ills, class war­fare, and con­fused politics–all blend in the back­ground as only what I want to view comes into the forefront.

Two things today forced me back into reality.

Lament of the Sub­way Employee

Mak­ing my weekly visit to Sub­way in the U-District today, a con­ver­sta­tion between the cus­tomer and the employee behind me struck a cord. It was as res­onat­ing as it is sim­ple. After they went through a few pleasantries:

Sand­wich Orderer: “So do you go to school?”

Employee, with a hint of sad­ness: “I wish I could.”

And that, my friends, is basi­cally all that’s wrong with our soci­ety. Where we are inca­pable of send­ing will­ing and able young adults to col­lege. And instead we waste their tal­ents and enthu­si­asm mak­ing sand­wiches for those lucky enough to be able to go to school. Disgusting.

Encounter on the 49

On the way home from work I usu­ally get on one of the first stops of route 49, so I’m almost guar­an­teed a win­dow seat where I’m per­fectly con­tent with star­ing out the pass­ing cityscape as I try to empty my mind of ter­mi­nals and web publishing.

Instead of look­ing out the win­dow, today I was dink­ing around on my tablet with a new mag­a­zine appli­ca­tion. After set­tling on read­ing a blog about video games, I noticed that some­one got on next to me. I don’t know how or why it struck me, but I sensed that they were some­one who was down on their luck and was around my parent’s age. As they glanced at me, read­ing about gam­ing, I sud­denly felt a over­whelm­ing sense of guilt and shame.

I give as much as I can to a mul­ti­tude of local char­i­ties that all do excep­tional work, but I felt like no mat­ter how much I did and sup­ported, things could never be per­fect. There would always be suf­fer­ing and many very well-meaning and nice peo­ple are worse off than me. And there’s noth­ing I can do about it. That’s a sober­ing con­cept, and a tough one to swallow.