Reality is relative

It amazes me how different some people’s realities are from mine.  Like doctors or teachers, or those people who play World of Warcraft. 

I just realized when reading something online that most people don’t even know one pet groomer.  They just have absolutely no idea that it is a real, skilled career or that there are schools for it and communities of people who meet up online and in real life to discuss grooming or attend grooming competitions. 

When I used to sharpen knives for a living, people thought that was weird too.  I don’t think people think about how knives in restaurants stay sharp, unless they worked in a kitchen, I guess.

It makes me wonder what other kinds of things people are into that I just have never considered.  Surely there must be all kinds of things. 

I worked for a while as a packer for a moving company.  It allowed me to regularly enter people’s homes and sift through their shit.  We went into everything, even finding things that they had (sometimes embarrassingly) forgotten about.  What a way to learn about people’s lives though.  Some people, of course, were careful to go through and pack up any personal items and have most of their shit in order, but much more often people would just seem to realize that we were coming that day and not even bother cleaning up after themselves. 

I think about this sometimes as I’m going about my day.  I wonder if what I’m doing and how I’m doing it is “normal” for other people.  There are so many different versions of normal that it really doesn’t matter what we do or how we act.  Just be nice.  That’s really all.