On RockBand and Being Human

So this is a bit of a double post. Firstly, I have long ridiculed the people who get all excited about RockBand, Guitar Hero, and SingStar. The video games always seemed silly. People just sitting there in front of their t.v, pretending to play guitar/drums/sing, even though they can't play that instrument. And then I actually played it. And guess what. It was so much fun. So Brandin, my brother and I pooled all our Target gift cards together from Christmas and bought it for our Playstation 3. Yes, we may look really stupid, sitting there, playing a plastic guitar. But really, who cares what people think when you're having so much fun?

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I got the book Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris for Christmas. I put it on my Amazon wishlist mainly because I thought it sounded like an "Office Space" type novel, and since I love the movie, I figured that I would love any book of the vein. Well, I am a little over halfway through the book and already know that I got much more than I expected. It's not just simply vapid, office meaninglessness, but there is something deeper. The characters in the novel are office caricatures; that weird guy in accounting who tells long stories with no point, or the receptionist who sends out mass emails of chain letters or stupid pictures, gossips, the watercooler: These caricatures are not new. Yet Ferris brings new life to them and we, as readers, become invested in the life of this office.

The novel is written in the all-inclusive first person plural, "we", which sucks the reader in and I found myself identifying with the office workers as their boss had breast cancer, as lay-offs came, when their coworker overdosed on antidepressants, when their ex-coworker became mentally unhinged, etc. It's really not a complex book on the surface, but meaning simmers just under the surface. How well do you really know your coworkers? Heck, it doesn't even have to be coworkers, it could be friends, even family. So often we are content to give and receive cursory answers that we may never really know what the other person is going through.

After reading this book, I am left with a feeling of vague discontent. The disconcerting realization that the people that I spend the most time with (coworkers, friends), I truly know the least. That by "just getting through the day", I am somehow missing the fundamental reason of being human: To care for people, invest in them, and receive care in return. I think it's a lesson well learned, and one I'm sure that I will continually need to relearn.