I don’t get it. I simply don’t get why
people transform into humans with traces of swine characteristics once they
move out of their homes, far away from the eyes and supervision of their
family. It’s beyond me why people, many times, simply choose not to learn
anything and decide to do things as they please, as if that had ever worked.
Maybe I am obsessed with order and with everything being spotless and clean but
I’d rather be obsessed that way than not caring about anything, not even your
own hygiene. If these people don’t even know how to clean their own room, how
are they taking care of their own bodies every day, if they are that is? It
disgusts me a bit to even think about it because to me being clean is not a
trace of character but a basic human instinct that you should know to survive.
Apparently, it is not as I thought. I have
lived with my parents for a long time and that has formed a certain image in my
head of how people usually live. I have gone to other houses, of course, but
always of people I’m related to or friends who also live with their parents, so
it’s not really a clear picture. I have even dated people that live alone but I
have to be honest and say I never pay attention to details in those moments so,
maybe they were clean and maybe they were not. That certainly something to
think about because if I decided to date someone permanently, I would certainly
decide such a thing based on the amount of order and cleanliness he has with
himself and everything he owns.
Is
that an exaggeration? I don’t think so. I mean, it’s not the worst thing to
prefer dating someone that is clean and knows how to behave like a human being.
I have to confess I hate people that eat and live all their plates in the sink.
And they pile up and the smell keeps getting worse and its like they’re waiting
for someone else do clean them for them and it’s simply pathetic. I just don’t
like that because I think it shows what kind of person you are and that’s
certainly not the kind of person I would like to be involved with. Is it insane
that I’m the opposite kind of person? The kind of person that cleans his mess
just seconds after creating it and the kind of person that gets sick if they
happen to find lots of hairs from strangers when cleaning the floors? Is that so
bad?
I don’t think so, of course, but people will
always exist that happen to love living in a certain degree of anarchy because
it makes them feels free. I have no idea why freedom is always related to a
mess, to chaos, because freedom is not chaos but respect. Or that’s what I
think. When you are free, you can do what you want, that’s true. But the only
way to properly use freedom is if you combine it with respect and use it wisely
instead of taking advantage of it as if you were a child, as if everything that
has the capacity to worry you doesn’t exist any more. Freedom is not dirt. I
refuse to even think about it like that.
However, people still think that living alone,
the “big liberation”, is al about doing whatever you want to do without any
excuses. So waking up late, showering becomes optional, eating whatever you
want whenever you want it, having no responsibilities or respect for anything
beyond your own body and not even thinking about any consequence because that
is just not cool. All of that is implanted in our minds when education at home
has been all but good or even remotely decent. People whose parents have
explained things to them have a tendency to be better socially simply because
they know why doing certain things is socially unacceptable or should simply be
avoided.
But let’s say all of that is ok, all of that
is perfect if you leave by yourself. You can be a pig if you want, when you
leave alone. But the truth is that when most people leave their homes, they
leave it to live with others. No one has the money to live really alone until
they have a proper job and so on. And seeing many students depend on their
parents to live away from home, the obvious answer is to live with roommates.
And that’s when everything we have been talking about comes back and acquires
importance. Because when you share a space with others, it’s not all about you.
You share a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and maybe other common areas.
True, your room is your own but that’s it.
So most people have filthy rooms and live like
pigs when being students but they try to behave like decent human beings
outside of it. Right? Well, wrong. Because many people, all of those we have
been talking about, they simply think that the world and the people in it that
are their same age are just as filthy as them. So the plates and pans start to
pile up, and so does the laundry and everything begins to become as filthy as
if they were living alone. Why? Because freedom means chaos for them and not
respect. They have no respect for themselves or for others, so they do thinks
as they think everyone in their situation does.
Of course, in order to have a nice life living
with roommates, people simply do not say a word. Maybe they like living like
that or maybe they simply do not want to quarrel with anyone about anything. I
personally do not know which one of those solutions is the worst. Not saying
anything and submitting yourself to the lives of others is beyond me, it’s
something I simply cannot understand. Especially when you have a stake your own
health because, at the end of the day, that’s what we are talking about. It’s
about our life and having a nice space to share with other people and not
simply about living and going forward like a mule. If we do that, we might reach
a point when there are no more roads to keep walking on.
All of this, some might think, is an
exaggeration. And maybe it is, maybe we won’t die if we clean our bodies in a
filthy shower or if we use the greasy pans that who knows how many others have used
in the past. Maybe those are not lethal things and we can survive a small mess.
But what that would entail would be a world where everything is a mess because
people have stopped caring about the fact that we always live in community, we
rarely live truly alone and there is no correct way to ignore that. What if bus
drivers stopped doing their routes as they are supposed to? Would that be
tolerable? What if airlines only had flights whenever they wanted or felt like
it? I bet many people wouldn’t be exactly happy about it or the world would be
a lazy ball of filthy and disgusting people.
To my knowledge, we haven’t reached that stage
and I personally hope we never do. Because this world is ours, for every single
one of us and we cannot live thinking it’s all about us because it isn’t. Each
person in this world is not important and that a truth we are never told or
reminded enough. Each one of us, in our own, is simply not important enough.
But as a group, as communities and as a species, we are important because of
the simplicity of numbers and the importance those numbers have when affecting
other numbers like the amount of trees, of drinkable water, of animals in the
world and so on. When we live together, we share and respect others as we
consider them equals; we gain more than we lose. And that’s the best for our
growth as human beings.
It is because we learn that by helping others
we are actually helping ourselves. Those dishes that are left in the kitchen
for hours or days, if we clean them just after we’re finished, we are letting
someone else use them and that person would likely do the same so at dinner
there will be clean plates to eat properly. If you clean the bathroom after you
use it, people will eventually notice and, no matter if it is because of guilt
or because they have learned, they will begin to clean everything too and the
chances to have an infection or something nasty get into you will be as low as
they can be. Of course, that’s the optimal way of living.
So why not living like we care about others
and ourselves? Why not living alone as if we were still living with our
families? The world doesn’t just get different because our personal situation
changes. The world does not care about a single organism but about the group,
the communities. So let’s live, let’s enjoy ourselves and let’s do that by
respecting others and letting them know how much we care about them and about
the world as such. You will forgive my rant, my incessant way of pushing these
truths down everyone’s throat but I do believe in the importance of respect,
because it brings and order to our lives than lives for far longer that any of
us would ever live. Because respect is freedom.
