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20140103

magnificent people

I don't often remember dreams, but when I do, they're either bizarre, or they're about random people I know or have known in real life.  The acquaintances that I remember from my dreams are usually people I think about in a certain way.

They are the people that I wish I had known better, the ones that stood out in some way.  Perhaps they were (and hopefully still are) particularly articulate, accomplished, or self-aware.  Often they seemed to possess some kind of wisdom.  They are magnificent specimens of the human race.

I don't usually like to talk about my admiration for these people because it could easily be taken the wrong way, but I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that I do love them in the agape sense of the word.  I've recently realized, however, that the problem isn't in feeling this divine-type love for people.  Rather, it's in not feeling it for everyone else.

It's easy to love beauty, be it physical or intellectual.  It is much harder to cultivate love for people that are boring in some sense.  It's also easy to love from afar; when you interact more closely with people, you see the dirt under their fingernails.  From there, it's easy to put them in a box with everyone else who has dirt under their fingernails.

I have no solution for now, but I think this realization it helpful in itself.  At the very least, this awareness can be used to help transfer some of my respect from the magnificent people to the mundane.

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