Seperated from Reality

The other day I was walking along with someone; let's call her Ms. Bootless. We were passing by some storage tanks that held liquid oxygen. For whatever reason, there were crewmen there venting off some of the O2. It looked really cool. The pipe it was venting out was coated with frost all along it's length. Fabulous science!

But that's not really the point. Ms. Bootless got all weirded out and didn't know what they were doing. She crossed the street and wouldn't go near it. "Why are they doing that? What is that?" she asked. I told her they were just releasing some liquid O2, that it was just oxygen. It didn't matter to her, and she said she wasn't going to go near it.

Now this event may not seem like a whole lot to someone who is not acquainted with Ms. Bootless. She bothers me, and it took me a long time to figure out why that was. And now I think I have a decent idea of why she bugs me so much. Here's the thing: I still have this silly idealistic notion that every person is worth something. She disconfirms that fanciful notion of mine.

Life, as I see it, builds toward something. It's different for everyone, and no one goal is intrinsically more "worthy" than any other. Ms. Bootless isn't building toward anything. She's said enough to the effect that she wants to just be in heaven so her troubles will be over. Setting aside my first reaction to that, it strikes me as a futile existence waiting for life to end. Where's the fulfillment in that? That's just subsistence with no meaningful prospects, completely setting aside the metaphysical garble that is the afterlife.

Either that, or she's just annoying.