Can You Love People?

Real, live people. I’m afraid I do. It makes me lonely to love people.

Not people as an abstraction. I’m talking about persons. When people start talking about their ideas for “the people,” I know some “persons” are going in the proverbial oven. Can you love your fellow man? Not the ones just like you. All sorts of other people. Everyone seems interested in fixing all the other people in the world. It’s not a new idea, but everyone thinks they’ve just invented the wheel or fire or something every time they try it. Persons always suffer when ideas about perfecting people get going. It’s an iron law, like gravity or the 1040 form.

People are raucous and noisy and they jostle and fight. They smell. Occasionally they smell good. They have ambition where you wish they’d lie still. They are somnolent when you’d prefer they push your cart. They are rotund and jolly and easygoing whether you think everyone should be a humorless ectomorph scold or not.

An ideal human’s behavior is being laid out with plumb bob and ruler right now, by people for whom I have no regard. The persons they are trying to make from the magnificent clay of humanity would be contemptible, if it was possible to produce them, which it isn’t. They wear the authenticity of real people like a cannibal wears the skin of his victim.

Above all, they hate the sight of children. They’re all still potential persons. Can’t have that, can we? Me? That’s why I love them.