"Awesome"

Awesome.

Adjective: Extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.

I love people. People are so awesome, in the original sense of the word.

Every single job I have ever had has been one that directly involved people and customer service. While at Jamba Juice, the regulars and I became good friends and while I blended their smoothies we'd laugh about life. As a State Parks employee, I conducted long-distance phone interviews with archaeologists, rangers, environmental specialists and directors. At A Cup of Tea, I was the happy waitress who brought customers pots of steaming tea and they'd share snippits of their day with me as I served their scones and lemon curd. And now at the ARC bookstore, I've spent the last five days literally surrounded by t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d-s of students.

I do really love people. I love hearing about their day, finding out about who they are, what they're passionate about, what their goals and frustrations are. People are fascinating; we're so incredibly similar and yet so breathtakingly different. The people we meet have so much potential to be forces of change, of strength, of power....and usually we don't even know it. I highly doubt C.S. Lewis' friends thought he would be a famous author. Nelson Mandela's boyhood friends probably had no idea he would be so great. Paul Farmer's siblings and parents certainly had no idea he'd make so much of a global difference. And how do I know my friends and peers won't grow up to be similarly incredible people. Just today, I may have shaken hands with the future president. I may have assisted the future leader of an influential NGO. I may have laughed with someone who will save another's life. I may have shared a conversation with the future's next Nobel Prize winner. You never know....and that's what makes people so amazing.

We are all unwritten stories. Our lives are just beginning and we have the entire world ahead of us. The potential and possibilities are overwhelming when you really stop to think about it.

It's awesome, really.