"In all seriousness, you can totally say hi and bye without it being 'weird.' Your acquaintance won't think much of it, and they probably feel the same way you do anyways. That way you'll be 'that nice girl/boy' instead of 'wait, does that person even go to our school?'"
An exercise of my faculties.

Not that long ago I had this big/massive/hidy-hidy-ho realization: Nobody cares. Hereby not saying that nobody cares, but nobody actually cares. Nobody cares when you're walking down the road, doing nothing peculiar or... weird. We're all just too busy with ourselves to realize what someone who's not me is doing.

I'm a bit paranoid towards, well everybody, because you're never sure of what they are actually thinking. And of course you'll think of the worse, because why think positive when you can think negative? WRONG! Everybody is, just like me, too busy with themselves that most of what occurs between the moment you've passed by, they won't even notice. They are too got up with their own existence whereby they can't see you walking. And you can't see them walking because you're too got up with your own excistence (this of course goes up for most of the time. Sometimes people see things and judge. But yeah, that's probably just like 10%).

Do you know those moments when you're walking and you get really conscious about the way you walk, whereby you just loose the ability to walk. Making you move forwards in a really unnatural manner...  

I'd rather have a cup of tea. Just saying.

Consciousness. Awareness. Realization. All comes down to the basic principle of reflection on subjective impressions from the outside world. Making you aware of what you see, hear or feel and giving you the ability to reflect upon that. It's a state of mind which is characterized by the environment and the perception of the self within that environment. Almost every philosopher has thought or even made statements about this "consciousness". René Descartes thought for instance that thinking and the outside world (reality) are two fully enclosed substances (aka not connected with eachother). Friedrich Nietzsche thought that the conceptual identity one has, is based upon a construction of self perception and not upon a reality besides that perception of the mind (aka subjectivism, aka we're not able to perceive things without being spoiled by our own perceptions, aka we're always bias, aka the plottwist of Pride & Prejudice). On top of that, Nietzsche said that by thinking we give the world a stability it doesn't has. By defining the names of objects we delimit the possibility for ourselves to turn that object into something different. A banana is a banana and can never become a balloon.

What, you'd might think, has this to do with the fact that nobody cares. Well, my nosy reader, I'll explain. In this day and age (oh yeah, I'm going to sound like an old whiney grandma... a good looking one though. Who smells nice. And has a good sense of grandeur. Making me aloof yet very agreeable...) we're living in a "self based" society. Making the individual queen of the empire. This of course alouds us to develop a consciousness that's been minimally tempered with by outsiders (making our perception of things indeed ours and not an opinion that's been measured by for instance society). However, going against Descartes, the influencess from the outside can also temper positively on the way we perceive ourselves and others. By being secluded, self based and not caring we'll walk side by side without being engaged with eachother. This of course can be experienced as something positive when you for instance overthink the walk whereby you can't walk, or as been guided by An exercise of my faculties for avoiding awkward encounters. However, it can make us unaware of the outside world, not understanding towards those who are different than us -the main source of why those proposed 10% sees things and judge people, unrightfully. Like Richard Osman said on the British panel show Room 101:

"Lots of people come up to you on the streets. And it's lovely and they're interested that you're tall and it's exciting and people love it. So by a large it's fine. But it's the people who shout out of car windows, in case you didn't know, 'EY! YOU'RE TALL MATE!' (...) Well, you know there's a class of people in the world who are delighted telling anyone they're different. And you know most peoples differencess are wonderful things and we celebrate them. And you know most people are like that. But there are a group of people as well who, whatever it is in their brains, will delight in letting you know that something about you is unusual. I mean if your shoelaces are undone, that's good. That's helpful. If you're telling me I'm tall, I promise you, it's covered".

John Locke is another philosopher who once said that "no man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience". He stated that reason alone is too limited to serve as the foundation of knowledge. One needs experience and reflection upon that experience. Everybody is a blank page when they're born. You begin with an "empty mind" which gets filled over the years with experience and impressions. Hereby making those two things the source of all knowledge, which provides the mind with ideas. Ideas themselves are not the actual physical objects or things, but they represent them as it were in the mind. Hereby making the attitude of not caring quite dangerous for the development of consiousness.

So to conclude with another male orientated voice (this time represented by Harry S. Truman):

"It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow's viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences".

Couldn't said it better myself.

Love,
Dominique