Quote of the Week...from Barbara Streisand

People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.    ---Barbara Streisand

Although renowned singer/actress Barbara Streisand sang these words from the sixties' hit Funny Girl musical's song People, it was Bob Merrill who wrote these lyrics.  On the surface, it's all a kind of feel-good statement...yeah, it's good to have a positive opinion of people, I guess.  And I strongly appreciate the presence of certain, specific people in my life...that is irrefutable.  But to sashay around in life relishing being around folks in general not only isn't a need of mine, but the experiences are usually frustrating if not outright distasteful.  All these social gatherings apparently designed with the lucky "people-needers" in mind, to me are just assembling individuals with their own walls and sometimes aggressive agendas toward others.  We just got a little puppy dog a few months ago and it sees us as its pack, with training largely having to do with making it feel secure in its assigned place (at the pack's bottom, of course).  But those people...of which I admit to being one...have the same kind of continually ongoing struggles about who is dominant and who is supposed to be submissive.  This intrigue for status in imaginary hierarchies plagues interpersonal relationships and ruins the social experience for me.  Sometimes I think people want to get together in concerts or mass rallies or similar settings...or even just sit in a coffee shop...just to be around others without the immediate necessity to work out this pecking order crap.  And yet, as we've seen with Covid-19 recently, the desire to just be in crowds isn't always such a hot idea, either.  Besides, when you're in one of them...these running races I occasionally enter come to mind...the people aren't really "together": they're all divided into their little subgroups, engaging in clannish behavior while regarding the strangers around them with guarded formality. When I see other people, I feel a strong sense of empathy toward them as fellow travelers through life, with many of them going through experiences similar to my own. Plus, we all need each other in that we provide important goods and services in our economy and society...my medical issues last year certainly bear that out.  And our close interpersonal relationships like family and close friends are likewise very meaningful.  But the notion that solitude is bad and it's important to seek immersion around others for its own sake has never caught on with me. No, there's got to be a good reason for me to hang out with others...guess I'm just unlucky that way...