Crowds

I just got done writing about how I experienced a blanket sense of loving everyone (read it here). It  is true. To me, this means primarily that my heart is facing towards people, with the openness to give the good I have, and the ultimate good I have is the love of God that resides in my heart, and I give it primarily by interceding, especially in this blanket sort of style. (The I hate you part came from the bitterness of unmet needs and wanting to blame the anonymous crowd for not meeting my needs, for not being God. It's irrational.)

That being said, I tell you, don't like crowds. After awhile I might say I hate crowds.

Now, I don't mind this type of crowd:

At WYD Saturday Evening Vigil

and I actually found this type of crowd oddly enjoyable. And I was certainly in plenty of them.

I was glad when I brought earplugs when I had loud Spaniards yelling behind me in this crowd. I laughed as I put them in. It was my way of saying, "I love you, but I'm gonna protect myself, ok?"

Angelus at the Wroclaw Cathedral during Days in the Diocese.

The crowds that I struggled with were no one particular group of people. Rather, it was simply when this was all I faced, hour after hour after hour. For me, crowds bespeak alienation, isolation, loneliness. One cannot speak with a crowd. One cannot look into the eyes of a crowd. One cannot ask a crowd how it feels, and get anything but a meaningless response.

I don't like "people," I like persons. To me, crowds are the exact opposite of persons.

The one way this works for me on any medium-to-long term basis is if the crowd is an audience, entirely focused on one thing, or at least without distractions from the focus being publicly communicated.

It was one of the factors that wore me down eventually.

But really, I can think of something more true to say than "I hate crowds." It is "I need people."