Why can’t people mind their own business? Everybody wants to play an extension of someone else’s conscience. I’m sorry but being old doesn’t necessarily make you an expect on life. If you tend to hang out with people who’re much older than you, they tend to want mold you into the exact likeness of them. Doesn’t really matter that their life is a mess of soap-operatic proportions, they just want you to do what they would have done. I think it’s an inert need to live their life a second time around through you. Like how a father who couldn’t make it to medical school pushes his child to become a doctor.

I think that’s the kind of problem I’m having with my 35 yr. old new best friend Kari. What I liked most about Kari was her brazen disregard for the conventional. At first I thought it was really cool, the way she did what ever she wanted but now it’s beginning to seem like she just wants to rebel against convention. She’s like an anarchist without a cause, she just wants to see how far she can get away with it. And she wants to turn me into a mini her! You’d think she of all people would understand the importance of individuality. I do think it’s an unjust world and I want to save every critter, animal, bug or tree from extinction but I’m not just about ready to go traipsing through the world chaining myself to trees!

How about work? Who’s going to pay my bills while I’m away… (it sure ain’t nature!) how about that education my mom wants so much for me to get (it’ll just break her poor heart)?

I do believe that people should follow their hearts and do exactly what they want I just don’t believe that they should in turn bully their believes into others. In short Kari wants me to join some environmental group in some ‘save the rain forest’ tour. I think it’s very commendable what they’re doing, but I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go live in a forest for months on end… (been there, done that !) Now she’s making me seem like some wimp who doesn’t care what happens to the world. How’s sleeping in some malaria invested forest going to save the world anyway???

This morning she tells me how disappointed she is and how she thought I was different. She keeps sending me articles of how the green world is dying. She’s playing the oldest guilt trip game in the world. Playing on my conscience, making me start thinking that it’s only I who can make the difference and my backing down ruins everything.

Kari maybe the most unregimented person I’ve ever met but she’s not different than a whole lot of us. She wants people to follow her rules for right and wrong, and her idea of independence.