I believe that essentially, we are all good people. 

Thursday night, sitting in my days old mismatched pajamas and a heap of dry kindling on top of my head instead of hair, I watch "The Newsroom" on my hacked HBO Go account. OK it wasn't really hacked, more like my ex-boyfriend gave me his Cable account user name and password before we broke up, and I decided to keep them. There's gotta be some ethical or moral issue to that but I digress. The episode set-up is that the Atlantic Cable News Channel (fictitious name), ACN for short, had lost half of its viewers to a rival network. ACN decided not to report on the Casey Anthony story as it had been on a season-long agenda to "civilize" the people by only giving them unbiased, truthful news of national, historical, or worldwide relevancy. The head honchos come down on the crew forcing them to cover the story. 22 minutes of their 45 minute time slot becomes devoted to the public's guilty pleasure, voyeurism on an attractive young woman who is being charged of killing and hiding the body of her own missing daughter. The time left for them to report on real, significant news, is reduced and could be researched by a small team of reporters working long hours, or the same team working less days. Mac, the News Executive Producer comments on her colleagues in the foreground, heads hunched at the blue screen on their computers while sitting at a bar. "Right now those guys are pulling a Friday night all-nighter on a three day weekend."

This scene is where the self-realization starts. My self-actualization. Why are these fictional characters still working while on their allotted leisure hours? Why don't they get along with their real lives? Why not watch a movie with friends, go to a restaurant, or veg out on a couch doing what I was doing (like binge-watching a tv show)? It was because their work, even if done on their off time, was what they actually wanted to be doing. Work and reality blends in, until work is not work anymore. You are just doing what you wanted to do but being able to earn a living from it. 

I dread my job. I dread going in there with a fake smile on my face as I fake happily prepare and revise the daily, superfluous paperwork that pass from and return to my fingertips. Was this what I wanted? A Job?

What do I want to do with my life? What do I want to do? What   do   I   want   to   do?

I like meeting new people, especially from places I haven't been before. I like making friends with them, sharing stories, sharing food, laughing with them, giving them shelter, visiting with them in their home town, and having them show me what they think is important or relevant or beautiful. I like describing the people I meet. I like telling the context of my new friendships, in location, in dress, in way of speaking, demeanor, and in the different smiles that I encounter. I like endearing one stranger to another when otherwise they would not consider so.

There is, I want to call it, a disease, that most everyone suffers. It is FEAR. Fear is the instinctual friend for survival but it is also the cloak that treats strangers as enemies. What is needed is education that these words strangers and enemies are mutually exclusive. One doesn't necessarily mean the other. The people of the world, despite our differences in culture, religion, indoctrination, are fundamentally similar creatures.We are a species that is capable of caring for each other, of empathy, and of peace. 

My "job" hit me then. What do I want to do? I want to make friends with strangers. I want to know who they are and show the world who they are as well. Profiles of "friends" all over the world who would dare welcome a "stranger" like me to their inner circle, their personal lives, or even their own homes. What little I can contribute to a far off dream, the default answer of beauty queens to the worldwide questions of what we all really want, I will do and want to do what I can, for #WorldPeace.