I watched “The Lake House” today again, featuring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. What a great movie.

But I had already gone to bed, when I started thinking about what it might be like to actually meet her (Sandra) one day. And, well, of course, it doesn’t take much figuring before you’re dreaming up scenarios and how we’d be talking to each other and laugh… which of course would never happen, because in real life, she is probably just like any other real person and would just have gone on with her life, and I with mine. The end. That was fun.

So what’s so special with her anyway? Nothing, I guess, apart from all the ordinary uniqueness in her person and her individuality, which in that respect makes her completely just like everyone else.

In fact, perhaps, sometimes, we’re so attuned to this great ideal, this Hollywood image of a person, that we forget that there are many, many others, just as unique and individual as her. What about all the Lillemors and Kerstins and retired Göstas down the street? Might they not be just as interesting? Might they not, if one looked into their particular lives, have interesting stories to tell, and be people worth knowing? Perhaps we’re so used to dealing with people as unnamed entities (“customers”, “clients”, “patients”) that we forget to see the unique individual behind.

There was a website once – I can’t find it now – called one billion people, or a million voices or something like that. It consisted of videotaped people, each talking about feelings, hopes, love, truth, pain; and all of them with their own particular stories to tell. I liked to browse through them very much, just to see what people had experienced and wanted to share.

Or am I perhaps wrong? Sometimes – especially when spending a lot of time reading blogs – I feel like the world consists of millions and millions of parrots, each echoing what the other one said. Maybe there is a point to my cynical feelings. If everyone is unique, how unique is that?

I don’t know. Perhaps I’m just rambling. But there is something to it, still: That sudden gleam of interest, that desire, in getting to know people and realizing that there is something special inside every one of us – not just our political views (Oh God how boring) but the way we feel about things, lessons we’ve learned in life. It’s a thought I am not too willing to let go of.

In any case, I certainly won’t pin any dreams on meeting a particular movie star or otherwise famous person; it might be just as worthwhile to meet the next person down the street in a slightly new way.

And now… back to bed.