Awkward Encounters

Have you ever seen someone waving in your general direction and waved back, only to realize that they were waving to someone behind you?

I hate when that happens. And almost as a self defense mechanism to that inevitable embarrassment you feel, where your face turns red and you awkwardly walk away as fast as you can wishing you could disappear, you decide next time you will not wave, you'll just wait until you are sure that they are waving at you...you and no one else.

Well this can get sticky too because then scenario two comes into play: Next time, you decide not to wave, and the person looks affronted and walks away thinking you could care less about their existence.

I mean, a person just seriously can't win.

I have learned over time that I think way too much into social situations, over-analyzing the most minute details. These are the kinds of things that I obsess over in my head before I go to bed at night...sometimes. Other times, I realize that I will never be perfect and just get on with my life.

But really, people. This phenomenon could be completely obsolete if we would just say, "Hey, ______!" while waving. Then maybe backward weirdos like me would know how to function and respond in this highly confusing, social world.

Speaking of awkward, take a look at this guy:

The name's Jeremy Bentham. He was an arrogant theorist who founded Utilitarian thought (the idea of weighing the costs and benefits of a moral situation based on the sole principles of pleasure and pain). Before he died, he asked that his body be preserved and put on display at University College London. This is, in fact, his real body, although the head did not do so well in preservation so they took it off and put it between his feet at the bottom of the case, and replaced the real one with a wax mold. Eventually, the real head was taken out as well, for obvious reasons. This dude is still carted out for annual meetings on discussions about utilitarianism.

I mean seriously, there couldn't be a more awkward death-bed wish: "Hey man, do you mind preserving my body for me in a glass case and then meeting every year with my body so that you can keep my theory alive and my memory in tact?" Yeah, sure. No problem.

Yep. It doesn't get any weirder than that.

*For those Lost fans out there, Jeremy Bentham was the name of John Locke when he came back to the real world to ask everyone to return to the island. So strange that they gave him that name...maybe some connection to Utilitarianism in some way?? Any thoughts?

**In my last post I made a reference to Romeo and Juliet as being symbolic for God's love for us...yeah that's not my idea. I failed to mention that Don Miller wrote about that in his book Searching For God Knows What, which is a book I recommend to anyone who is doing just that.