Zero to Heaven in Seven

It's hard for me to gather my thoughts when they're especially deep, or anything beyond what I want to eat, what I like, what I'm feeling. But I rode my bike to the lakefront today and sat on a bench in front of the marina and the hazy Chicago skyline. Between reading Kerouac's The Town and The City and text messages from my mom, I got to thinking about San Francisco and my relationships there and how they differ so much from the new ones I have here in Chicago. You see, I think the thing is, people in San Francisco (not all, but most) are too concerned with themselves and their own interests and their own wants and needs that they don't want to learn anything new, they don't want to talk and share thoughts and philosophies with each other or anyone at all for that matter. In the last month that I've lived in Chicago, I've felt more accepted than I have living anywhere else. People like to have intense conversations--whether it be about religion and what God wants for us or about nihilism and anarchy and regardless of whether I agree or not with whomever I am conversing with, my opinion is questioned for the purpose of understanding myself and making absolute certain that I believe what I said and in the end, that opinion is accepted as valid. My closest friends in Chicago are people that believe things that are vastly different than what I believe and have interests and ideas that I'd never even heard of, never mind had my own opinion of, before I met them. And all we need is just the slightest basis of a common interest. Not even multiple. Just one is all we need to get along, to have a spring board to learn more about each other and maybe over time develop more common interests based on our own enlightenment.

If you are friends with people that have only the same tastes in music, literature, religion, love, life, then there's nothing new to learn, certainly not about yourself. The people I have met here have encouraged me to question everything I believe, have turned me on to new music, new literature, new ideals, new interests and new ideas and understandings of who I am and where I stand in the world. It's not that people in San Francisco were drab and boring and mean, not at all. It's just, the only close friends I had there were people I lived with and saw every day and sort of became normal. Here, there is a sense of excitement when I have plans to go out with someone because who knows what will happen, what I will learn about myself, my society, the city, the world. It's an incredible feeling of exhiliration living here where I previously knew nobody. I love Chicago. Moving here was probably the best impulsive decision I've ever made.