Can You NOT?!?

 I'm sorry but I just fucking hate people talking on their phones in grocery shores. Fucking HATE IT.

And I'm not even lying about being sorry. I try -- I *keep* on trying -- to remind myself sometimes people have good reasons to do this DISTRACTING SELF-IMPORTANT SELF-CENTERED "multitasking", completely inconsiderate of everyone around them and unable to detect how much they are in other people's way, blasting their hot stupid breath and voices and ring tones all over. And any morsel of empathy, understanding or tolerance I can summon is overshadowed by just FUCKING HATING IT.

It's one of those things we have to resign ourselves to, apparently. An unaddressed much more distressing aspect of "the new normal" than the new normal things that never fully took off as normal and preceded this phase and I just think a lot of it is a performance. It is an advertisement of not giving a shit about others. A show of being soooo important soooooo busy sooooo consumed with sooooo many socials and/or dramas and/or demands placed on you and requests for your supervision. A visual and auditory demonstration of being tuned into something soooooo much more entertaining and on-your-level than this boring mundane process of grocery shopping. Unless it's that thing where you and your mate are SO BUSY *all* THE TIME that you can only synchronize your shopping lists while you're actually doing the shopping at the last minute and it's imperative you consult with one-another while you're doing it and you accept ALL of your calls in the frozen foods aisle as this is your second office, your home office, and everyone else can just accept it -- that you are very important, and this is your time for personal home office work, not when you're in your car or standing in front of the milk in your own refrigerator in your own kitchen because you'll be TOO BUSY in your kitchen or to take the necessary moments in your car because you are so busybusybusy and not a moment to waste you're sooooo important and EVERYTHING in your life and on your phone is SOOOO IMPORTANT and if you aren't important enough to talk on the phone in the grocery store than you must be so lucky and completely ignorant of the extraordinary amount of skill and multitasking an important person like you has to do.

Fuck you and your super-important life where everything is of equal importance except for what you are doing RIGHT NOW, and the people around you who have to passively participate in your bullshit life.

I am trying to think about how to apply the metta meditation stuff to this. I'm able to do it with traffic. I should be able to do it with this phone-talking grocery-shopping thing. But I may have further to go towards actually feeling the same kind of human-animal as these phone-talking people. Maybe it's because grocery shopping (any shopping, really) is often really hard for me and I can't conceive of how talking on the phone at the same time would make it easier.

I also just don't understand people's lack of self-consciousness in general with conversing in public, not caring how many people are overhearing your personal business or the privacy of the people you're gossiping about deserve. I have to be at least a little drunk-ish or in a super-psycho place to get that way. Not unheard of, but definitely not in line with my values or how I want to be. Which is one of many reasons I have not had any alcohol this entire year.

Honestly though? I think it is less shameful to do your grocery shopping drunk than talking on your phone.

Okay ... maybe another thing, I just realized, is probably RESENTMENT. I resent that it is acceptable to broadcast your inane phone calls in the grocery store, but viewed as psycho to DANCE IN THE AISLES OF THE GROCERY STORE WHEN A GOOD SONG COMES ON. I still do it sometimes, but man ... I wish I could do it more. I wish we ALL could dance in the aisles of the grocery store more. It's the only off-topic thing I believe in there, I think. And it's not even off-topic! They're PLAYING MUSIC!!!

Everything is so fucked up. See ... it is not bitchiness that makes me hate the phone talkers. It is my desire for all of us to dance more. To dance whenever we hear a song that makes us want to. And I don't understand not wanting to dance, but wanting to talk on the phone. Why should I be embarrassed of dancing in the aisles of the grocery store, but you're not embarrassed of making everyone listen to your stupid fucking irrelevant ridiculous phone conversation with someone who is not even HERE? 

I am not a bitch. I am someone who wants us to be here together where we are, aware of one another.  Caring about what we're doing. Hearing the music. Dancing.

I guess it comes back to recognizing those phone talkers are not happy. They are suffering. More than I am listening to them, and I should just feel sorry for them and pray for them and shit.