Sonder

In all honesty - as much as fell like a slave to advertisements - I love the mall. I love finding shoes at journeys for 75% off, I love finding "ill" bro-tanks at pac-sun and pretending I can pull them off, I love walking into the north face and imagining how nice it would be to wear a six hundred dollar coat during that trip to the summit of K2 that I'll (probably) never go on. But by far the most intriguing part of the mall is the people. I love watching parents who bring their children to Chuck-E-Cheese either because it's their child's birthday, or because they - for some reason - feel it's okay for a giant mouse in desperate need of dental work to do their parenting for them (maybe that's a bit harsh, but that mouse was the embodiment of nightmares for a young me). I love watching elderly gentlemen enter stores like Nordstrom Rack, to buy yet another Italian-leather belt, because the according to the store's advertisements it's a wise way to spend your dwindling retirement funds. And then there's horde of middle aged women seeking ways to stay young crowded the fancy tea-shop in the mall that sells tea of a obviously much higher quality than that of Tazo or Bigelow - I mean there's unlimited free samples, and it's packed full of anti-oxidants and other words randomly chosen from a medical dictionary, how could it not be the best tea possible? But perhaps no store is more intriguing for me than stores such as Hot Topic. For me, I see Hot Topic as nothing more than a way for teenagers to rebel against the man, large business, wall street, and advertisement, by giving in to advertisement. Again, maybe that's a bit cynical, but it bothers me when people walk out of the store wearing shirts with blatantly obvious sexual innuendos or unnecessary swear words, or a picture of a completely naked woman across the front of it. Like I said, I see it as a sad way for people to feel as if they are rebelling against society.

But then, I couldn't help feel the weight of each and every person that passed by me. All of them were living lives. Lives with the same curiosities, strife, anger, joy, and blandness as mine. Each of them lived a deeply intricate and complex life with their own reasons for buying what they buy, and in awe of this amazing and weighty fact, I couldn't help but sit on a bench and smile in amazement.