We are selfish creatures yo

There was a week, about three months ago, that I like to refer to as the "Michael Renaissance". My brother called me to tell me of all the modern art he had discovered, the instrument he was learning to play, the sound-heavy music he had downloaded, the hours he had put into perfecting his handwriting, and his new found respect for British authors. The familiar silence that usually snuck its way into our conversation was replaced with his well-educated chatter about culture and rebirth. He was a new Mike that week, a Renaissance Mike. And although his enrollment in harmonica lessons and lengthy analysis on the development of soccer were shockingly impressive, nothing left a more memorable impact on me than his farewell sentence. He said to me, "Julie, can you imagine how humanizing it would be to get through an entire conversation without using the words 'I' or 'me'?"

Think about it, almost every conversation we hold revolves around something that is directly related to ourselves. I will be the first one to admit that when I am not talking about me, I am talking about my friends or my ideals or why you should read my blog. It's always about me. And it's always about you, too. I think that a lot of us try to be selfless by talking about whoever it is we are talking to. We ask "how was your day?" instead of saying "here's how my day was." But, I don't think that is what my brother was trying to say.

When was the last time you had a conversation about a worldly event? Probably yesterday. When was the last time you did it without giving your opinion on whatever happened? I don't know that I ever have. I wish I knew how to have a conversation (or even a thought for that matter) that didn't somehow relate back to myself. That famine over in Africa isn't about what my friends and I can do to help. It is about starving children and broken families and miserable lives. EVERYTHING in the world is BIGGER than what I know and the connections I can make to it. I know maybe 800 people out of the 6.5 billion people on this planet. Yet those 800 people are a part of every conversation I have. And one single human being, someone I call 'me', is unavoidably at the center of every decision I make.


A first person pronoun was used 31 times in this blog post. That is sickening.