Hypothetical @ MindSay 
You work at a "food cooperative" at your local university -- housed on campus property. It's been a staple of the university for decades now -- the only real place on campus where you can get truly organic food -- much of it far healthier than the junk they serve in the dining hall. But the best part is that this is a true co-op -- profits are used specifically to pay operating expenses, including the wages of the employees. There's no management; everyone who works there has an equal stake in the co-op -- which really isn't a financial stake as much as one of decision-making.
You're at the cash register during lunch. People are coming and going with their assorted foodstuffs. One person comes up to you to pay for his/her items. As you're about to ring him/her up, you see that s/he is wearing a t-shirt which you deem to be offensive. Depending on your own beliefs, it could be:
I STAND WITH SATAN.
JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR YOUR SINS.
BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED.
I STAND WITH KIM JONG IL.
AMERICA - LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.
HITLER WAS A VEGETARIAN.
Anyway -- it's something like that -- something which touches a nerve. The customer is not being belligerent or even speaking during the whole ordeal.
What do you do?
Do you serve the customer without commenting on the shirt?
Do you serve the customer and get into a disagreement about the ideology of the shirt?
Do you refuse service to the customer?
Do you kick the customer out of the store?
Just curious about what you feel would be an acceptable response in a situation like this...
Imagine for a second you're in Shanghai.
You're up in a 40 story apartment building looking out through the window pane. What do you see?
Do you notice the families of superhighways that pummel their way through the city like a river, teaming with determined and regimented oily fish?
Do you notice the heavyset brutalist concrete slabs that still jut out everywhere, making up lifestyles for maybe hundreds and thousands and millions of those linked swimming fish, despite the unspeakable failures of the collectivist utopian principles associated with the architecture style and your heartland itself?
Do you see hanging laundry? Does it make up a colourful tapestry -- like the series of monochromatic boxes and buildings down there below?
Do you strain to catch a glimpse of the green patch way out there, that little postage stamp which served as your high school football field, even though you never played, wondering who runs out there now?
Do you wonder if there really are gangsters in the walled streets of Pudong, more down there by the sea, working the streets, for a brief moment caught in a pause, looking up at apartments aimlessly, just dreaming, about whatever?
Do you try to guess how much more of the sky will be taken up by those blobs and squares and art pieces, that shoot up like weeds, and in less than a month?
Are you escaping from bills, or incompetence, or that thing you're ashamed of, not looking at anything, but just letting your eyes glaze over?
Are you thinking about the networks -- phone lines, satellite receivers, optic fibers and radio waves -- that keep gamers together, gathered in market shops, to converse and battle with icons?
Maybe you're letting your mind run wild, trying to get on that new train -- to turn the tides of the market so you can make your own gains.
Maybe you're calm on the outside but terrified on the inside, thinking of all those other who have been captured, knowing you could be next (you've done enough already -- they wouldn't have trouble coming up with a reason).
Maybe all you want is out, and you just can't see a way, despite all your best efforts and all that humiliation.
Or maybe you feel completely at ease, finally tranquil, looking out over all this knowing you're a part; you have a stake here, cleaning all these stream fish of the dirt and the burdens, glad to contribute to the society, to what's best for this family...
I don't know, though. I'm only imagining.
I have a quick question for anyone reading. Why does everyone like my blog so much? I dont know half the people who look at it, but they look at it almost religously. I guess I can use that for good, huh? But seriously, I'm really not that interesting of a person. Am I? Hmm... Something to ponder.....
Okay so update.....
I'm currently at my sisters'. It's 1am and I'm wating anything but patiently for my..... I'm not sure what to call him exactly.... to come on. See, there's another thing imput would be la excellente on. This hypothetical *person* and I aren't friends with benefits, but we're more than friends and less than dating. I've adapted a name for the relationship.... effed up.
Imput, calling all imput. Why the heck do people read my blog, and what *fropesstional* (sorry, I'm bored professional) name for my *hypothetical 'friend'* and my relationship.
"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love Christ and are called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28