Invisible

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend from work. We talk on almost a daily basis and every once in a while we'll go for a coffee. I think we gravitate to each other as we're the only ones there under 30. Actually, we're the exact same age (I'm a couple months older) yet our lives are so very different. She was married (is getting divorced), has 2 children (a 5 year old and a 2 year old) and she supports them on what cannot be described as the greatest job. She lives at home with her mother and brother in a 2 bedroom apartment and is very slowly working her way through college. Her (soon to be ex-) husband cheated on her with one of her friends/co-workers and is now expecting twins with his new girlfriend. She is one of very few people that continually garners further respect from me the better acquainted we become. She is the "cleaning lady" at my office. It's difficult to express my frustration over the fact that she has been working at our office since July and half of them still call her the "cleaning lady" as they haven't bothered to learn her name. They see her every day, at least twice a day, and some of them don't even know what she looks like. It's disturbing how many people we make invisible in our daily lives. Every morning I get on the bus and I tell the bus driver good morning and thank you when I get off (I can count on one hand the number of other people I see do this). If I catch the eye of anyone around me (bus stop, store, school) I generally like to offer some sort of greeting. Why do people walk around pretending that they can't see anyone else (or ignoring the ones they do)? For a while I stopped saying "Good Morning" to co-workers who never returned my greeting and then I realized it's not my problem if they don't have the common courtesy/manners to recognize me as a fellow human being. I don't want to stop seeing people. (It helps lately that I've been wearing my glasses or contacts). I know I've confessed to being a selfish (and to a degree self-absorbed) person, but it what does it take from me to give someone else the 10 seconds it takes acknowledge them and in some cases thank them for the whatever they've contributed to my day.