What Teenage Girl Said: “Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they’re too busy with their own.”

Picture by Geta.80 on Flickr.

I get cynical like anyone else does. Sometimes it’s shockingly easy to believe the world is ‘out to get you’, and everyone is laughing at you from behind their seemingly impartial eyes. The world, and all of the other people in this world, end up becoming our enemy. We like our friends and family (well, maybe not all of our family…) because we know them, they’re familiar and human. They’re all fundamentally flawed, just like us. It’s the ‘others’ we aren’t so sure about…

I’ve found that our personal space bubbles keep expanding, and we wear sunglasses often less for fashion and more to avoid making eye contact. We don’t want hassles, and we’re positively terrified of being found out for being so damn human (read: imperfect). You never want to be caught in the midst of an unscheduled moment of life. Smooth that hair, sip that Starbucks – you aren’t looking at anyone else. More often than not, no one is looking at you either. No one is looking at anyone else. We’re mirrors that don’t catch reflections.

Picture by Geta.80 on Flickr

I am thinking about this after reading an interview with Brian Cotlove of PostSecretFrance. (You can read the entire interview on MySpace.) I want to point out one of his answers:

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers

Q: Has receiving so many secrets changed you?

A: Absolutely. It has definitely made me less cynical about the world and the people in it. All those thousands of faces that walk by us each day and we don’t even think about being actual, real, thinking, feeling people. The secrets that have been shared with me have given each one of those unknown faces a bit more of a human and personal aspect to them.

Secondly working with PostSecretFrance has made me more patient. Thanks to all of the secrets that I have received about people’s deep fears, troubles, desires, and thoughts, I can now realize that my small, insignificant problems are just that…small and insignificant. PostSecretFrance has taught me to focus on what’s important and not worry about the small things.

If you’re a devoted Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, then probably you know what I’m thinking of now. It’s the exchange that young, teen Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) has with Jonathan in season three’s controversial episode Earshot. If you’re not a Buffy fan, you’re probably rolling your eyes. But read it anyway. (It’s listed as one of the top ten best monologues on the show, according to Slayage.com – a link I found via Whedonesque.) You might be surprised by the poignant universal message found in a ‘teen vampire show’. Then again, if you’re a fan of the show, that’s certainly no surprise to you.

The Scene:

[Buffy finds Jonathan in the clock tower with a rifle.]
Jonathan: Go away!
Buffy: Never gonna happen.
Jonathan: You think I won’t use this?
Buffy: I don’t know, Jonathan. I just –
Jonathan: Stop doing that!
Buffy: Doing what?
Jonathan: Stop saying my name like we’re friends! We’re not friends! You all think I’m an idiot! A short idiot!
Buffy: I don’t. I don’t think about you much at all. Nobody here really does. Bugs you, doesn’t it? You have all this pain and all these feelings, and nobody’s really paying attention?
Jonathan: You think I just want attention?
Buffy: No. I think you’re up in the clock tower with a high-powered rifle because you wanna blend in. Believe it or not, Jonathan, I understand about the pain.
Jonathan [bitterly]: Oh, right! Because the burden of being beautiful and athletic, that’s a crippler!
Buffy: You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it’s not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they’re too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It’s not. It’s deafening… You know, I could’ve taken that by now.
Jonathan: I know.
Buffy: [holds out hand] I’d rather do it this way. [takes the rifle from Jonathan]

(Sometimes you just need a reminder.)

P.S. This site is awesome: cassettefrommyex.com

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