Small minds. An interesting concept, that, considering that the human brain is sometimes described as the 'most powerful computer in existence'. It can do so much, and yet people are constantly inventing new words to insult the capacity of the brain - stupid, dumb, idiot, eejit, dope, witless, dense, dull, dim, foolish, nitwit, obtuse... and they're just the ones that aren't rude. Why do we do this? Is it really because, as our parents suggest when we come home crying from primary school, being mean to others makes us feel good? Makes us feel clever? More important? Why do some people take pleasure from insulting others and some take pleasure from making people's day? Looking back on my own primary school days, I can remember a couple of boys and a girl, all with faces which made me itch to slap them just by looking at them, who would stalk a slug with a packet of salt and watch gleefully as it shrank before their eyes. Those are the minds that are small. Those are the minds that will (hopefully, if karma has anything to do with it) spend their entire lives stacking boxes. (Not that there's anything wrong with stacking boxes, but most of us have higher ambitions). But karma doesn't always work, does it? And even when it does, it doesn't work soon enough for you to be standing there, pointing and laughing, and certainly not soon enough for them to realize why their lives are suddenly crumbling about their ears. It always seems to be the nice guys for whom things go wrong and I for one am sick of it.
It's so easy to look at someone and judge them. Someone you pass in the street or even someone you know. Someone in your classes, perhaps. Maybe even someone in your group of friends. We can think we know a person inside out but really we have no idea what goes on inside their head. How can we, without being them? Sometimes we do know what's going on inside their head but we just don't remember and we judge anyway. Forgetting is fine. Forgetting is human. We're not elephants, after all - even though sometimes we may feel like one (and some people around college certainly resemble one. Trunk and everything). But when people who really don't know what they're talking about try to tell me what they think is best for me... that is one of the most irritating things in the world, pretty much up there with being told that your A Levels aren't proper subjects and that they're not very important (oh yes, I speak from experience). There's a difference, though, between thinking you know everything because you care, much like my mum did after she went to one talk on uni and considered herself the expert on personal statements, and thinking you know everything because you think you know everything. Those people are just annoying, sticking their noses into people's lives, trying to influence people who are absolutely nothing like them to act the way they do and think the way they do and like the same things they do.
I can't look at people now without wondering if they're as normal as they seem - I understand that things aren't always as straightforward as they may look on the surface, and until you're in that person's shoes for yourself, you have no idea what their lives are like and you should not try to make decisions for them. Let people live their own lives, and if they let you in, don't close the door in their face.
Molly x
An example of small pleasures for small minds is the fact that I have indeed changed my blog background - I thought the whole eye-zapping green thing I had going on was a bit too 'old me'. If you noticed that, nice one. You are perfectly small and openminded at the same time.
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