I'LL NEVER LAUGH AT MY GARBAGE AGAIN

Some things are so funny they're downright instructive. Take stand-ups like Cosby and Seinfeld. How often you find yourself laughing at the punch line the very same time you're thinking: "How true!"

This morning, taking the garbage out to the front curb, I was laughing at my own instructive punch line. "Morning ..." says I to the truck driver whose automatic lift scooped up the container. "Nice morning..." The voice from the driver's seat replied, "Sure is...."

What's so funny? He drove off and I walked back without either one of us looking at the other. I can't tell you what he looked like, nor can he me. Here we're talking without looking, greeting without caring. In a sad sort of way, that's funny. But at the same time, instructive. When you think about it, it's very much how we go through our lives. Each day. Never quite looking at one another.

Popes and poets, novelists and neuro-scientists talk about this. But, as Mark Twain wryly reported, we always talk about the weather too; but we don't do much about that either.

When you look at the Greek's armless Venus or Michelangelo's stunning David, well you sorta feel good about our species. Consider all that splendid form and beauty. Whether a gift from the hand of a creator or simply the evolution of some distant stardust, humanity is spectacular to behold.

And yet....

Why is it we spectacular humans will devote more time to reading or watching about Martha Stewart, Paris Hilton, and Donald Trump than we will about the guy who keeps us from drowning in our own garbage? About the neighbor who shares the same community? About the bus driver or airline pilot who makes our journey possible? Or -- lets be honest -- about our own family and friends whose value we so casually take for granted?

Extrapolate this to the way generals interact with their troops, bosses with their workers, coaches with their players, democrats with republicans, my generation with your generation, my countrymen with your country men. You can see why it can be so laughingly instructive. There's this peculiar passion for self that blurs the other selves with whom we walk the planet. Always has, always will.

Over the centuries we seek to overcome this dangerous blurring by bonding. Into families, tribes, societies, religions, nations. Now if I can just get to know my garbage collector better, and he me, then that might be one small step for me. And one large step for mankind.