Tennis courts and a chain-linked fence

The road to my house is very plain and uninteresting. At the first corner of my community and across the plain and uninteresting road, there is a community center. The grounds of that center are well kept; there’s a fountain during the summer that turns into a skating rink during the winter; there are tennis courts, surrounded by high, black, chain-linked fences. I almost never see anybody there. When I do see them, they’re walking around, hunched, looking at the ground in the same way I do, when the weight of the world sits high on my shoulders.

Turning the corner all you’ll see lining the road are houses. Those houses sit almost exactly but not quite 5 feet apart from each other; rows of houses where every third one down looks exactly the same as the third one down. A little farther down that road is a park to the right that’s painted in bright dull hues of blue, red, and yellow. I never see kids playing in that park. This makes me worry about a lot of things, and has made me make decisions about the direction of my own life.

Communities like the one I live in are boring. I see no people, and those people see no people, and those people that aren’t seen also see no people. It’s a dull way to live, and I don’t want it. I’ve noticed that in my own life it’s only away from home where I can mingle and enjoy the company of others, and I don’t think it should be this way. Nothing exciting ever happens in that community.

And people are content. Or so it seems. I would say that they’re more comfortable than anything else. They live in their box, and do nothing interesting outside of taking care of that box. At the place I work at I rent out tools to those comfortable people, and when I ask them what’s new and exciting, they have nothing to say. Typically the conversation ends, with a shrug of the shoulders, a tilt of the head, and a “Nothing really.”

You know, I can only speculate so much. I realise that what I’m saying is a bit biased and unfounded, but I can’t help but think those plain people in their plain houses on their plain road have helped me in a way. Being as young as I am, I don’t really have a direction in life and it’s really easy for people as young as me to become complacent in the environment around us. I remember these two guys who went to high school with me who still have the same job they had when they were fifteen years old. They go to work every day, they have weekends off, they have a car, a house, a girlfriend; they don’t wish for anything much more exciting than that.

Maybe it’s just me who thinks this, but being young is not taken advantage of all too often; I see it happening all the time all around me. If this is how the world’s next generation of leaders are going to be, well, I can’t say I expect much. There’s a time and place for everything, and when you’re twenty one and able, it’s time to see everything the world has to offer, rather than being happy in a community where the center has a fountain that turns into a skating rink during the winter, and tennis courts typically surrounded by high, black, chain-linked fences.